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Tansy_Gold

(17,815 posts)
Mon Apr 30, 2012, 07:14 PM Apr 2012

STOCK MARKET WATCH-- 1 May 2012

[font size=3]STOCK MARKET WATCH, Tuesday, 1 May 2012[font color=black][/font]


SMW for 30 April 2012

AT THE CLOSING BELL ON 30 April 2012
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Dow Jones 13,213.63 -14.68 (-0.11%)
S&P 500 1,397.91 -5.45 (-0.39%)
Nasdaq 3,046.36 -22.84 (-0.74%)


[font color=green]10 Year 1.91% -0.01 (-0.52%)
[font color=red]30 Year 3.11% +0.01 (0.32%) [font color=black]


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[font size=2]Market Conditions During Trading Hours[/font]
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[font size=2]Euro, Yen, Loonie, Silver and Gold[center]

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[font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Market Data and News:[/font][/font]
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Economic Calendar
Marketwatch Data
Bloomberg Economic News
Yahoo Finance
Google Finance
Bank Tracker
Credit Union Tracker
Daily Job Cuts
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[font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Government Issues:[/font][/font]
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LegitGov
Open Government
Earmark Database
USA spending.gov
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Financial Sector Officials Convicted since 1/20/09 = [/font][font color=red]12[/font]
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



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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]


64 replies = new reply since forum marked as read
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STOCK MARKET WATCH-- 1 May 2012 (Original Post) Tansy_Gold Apr 2012 OP
Mitt Romney is the most awesome... rfranklin Apr 2012 #1
That he is! Demeter Apr 2012 #2
In Ohio, rumors are strong for Portman for VP, n/t DemReadingDU Apr 2012 #9
Don't forget that it was the Repukes who put up Bush... jimlup Apr 2012 #10
Repulsive is a bit different than asshole Demeter Apr 2012 #12
He's Marie Antoinette running for President. tclambert Apr 2012 #3
Perfect! Too funny! (n/t) bread_and_roses Apr 2012 #11
Could that qualify as a DUzy? Tansy_Gold Apr 2012 #18
Reagan and Stupid were worse Warpy Apr 2012 #19
Mitt Romney, American Parasite Demeter Apr 2012 #20
Why This May Day Matters By Sarah van Gelder Demeter Apr 2012 #4
Taking Back May Day: What to Expect on the Nationwide Day of Rallies, Strikes and Actions Demeter Apr 2012 #8
May Day Started Here By Noam Chomsky Demeter Apr 2012 #15
Hear! Hear! Roland99 May 2012 #49
Today, May 1st, Ghost Dog May 2012 #25
Is It Possible To Build An Economy Without Jobs? Demeter Apr 2012 #5
Now that's funny!! westerebus Apr 2012 #6
I just couldn't help myself. Tansy_Gold Apr 2012 #17
EXACTLY! westerebus May 2012 #53
Why Low Minimum Wages Kill Jobs and Crush Living Standards for Everyone By Marshall Auerback Demeter Apr 2012 #7
Buy your way to Heaven! The Catholic Church brings back indulgences Demeter Apr 2012 #13
Can sin eaters be far behind...... AnneD May 2012 #48
What next? westerebus May 2012 #55
Or the Spanish Inquisition! Demeter May 2012 #60
25 Horrible Statistics About The U.S. Economy That Barack Obama Does Not Want You To Know Demeter Apr 2012 #14
When I first starting posting here on SMW years age.... AnneD May 2012 #58
Welcome to the Asylum By Chris Hedges Demeter Apr 2012 #16
This message was self-deleted by its author kickysnana Apr 2012 #21
missed all that drama DemReadingDU May 2012 #41
Don't worry, you didn't miss much Demeter May 2012 #42
Debt-ridden Countries IMF'd : Michael Hudson Demeter Apr 2012 #22
that was the grimmiest, least apple-polishing report I've heard yet Demeter Apr 2012 #23
With the state of Japans economy, and all their other problems, Fuddnik May 2012 #24
They can print it. girl gone mad May 2012 #28
i'm so tired... xchrom May 2012 #26
Happy May Day! girl gone mad May 2012 #27
1 May! ... and... Pound hits two-year high against euro Ghost Dog May 2012 #30
UK Manufacturing Growth Slows In April Ghost Dog May 2012 #31
Uh huh... Pound Extends Slide On Weak UK PMI Ghost Dog May 2012 #33
Defiant Rajoy warns he will push ahead with reforms “every Friday” xchrom May 2012 #29
Indians say their lives are getting worse, despite fast economic growth xchrom May 2012 #32
"It is very dangerous to create expectations... AnneD May 2012 #64
It Looks Like The Global Economy Is Rolling Over xchrom May 2012 #34
Ben pounds on the presses after Asia tanks Demeter May 2012 #35
Japan stocks hurt by yen; rate cut lifts Australia Demeter May 2012 #37
I think the Bots have taken over Demeter May 2012 #61
MAY DAY: Japan Tumbles, Europe Closed, US Futures Going Nowhere xchrom May 2012 #36
N.H. To The Unemployed: Try An Unpaid Internship Demeter May 2012 #38
Listened to it on the way in.... AnneD May 2012 #54
Free labor for temp job DemReadingDU May 2012 #57
Fed officials, hawk and dove, agree: no more easing (BUT DOES BEN CONCUR?) Demeter May 2012 #39
To Cut Fuel Bill, Delta Gambles On Refinery Buy Demeter May 2012 #40
Profumo salary cut to set tone at lender Demeter May 2012 #43
The Obama Contradiction Demeter May 2012 #44
Berlin insists on eurozone austerity Demeter May 2012 #45
Lloyds warns of long and difficult recovery xchrom May 2012 #46
US Futures up marginally. Europe down over 1% (Brits bucking the trend) Roland99 May 2012 #47
N.Y., JPMorgan Sued by Council Members in Occupy Lawsuit Demeter May 2012 #50
Charlotte Suspends Constitutional Free Speech, Assembly to Help Bank of America, Duke Shareholder Me Demeter May 2012 #52
Big Employers Extorting States, Pocketing Employee Income Tax Withholding Demeter May 2012 #51
Legal Eagles in Cross Hairs (OF SEC) Demeter May 2012 #56
ISM Manufacturing survey rises to 54.8% in April Roland99 May 2012 #59
Oil over $106/bbl after ISM news (up a whole 1%...wow...we're booming!) Roland99 May 2012 #62
Dow rallies to heights not seen in more than four years Roland99 May 2012 #63
 

rfranklin

(13,200 posts)
1. Mitt Romney is the most awesome...
Mon Apr 30, 2012, 07:18 PM
Apr 2012

asshole the Republican party has ever put up as a presidential candidate.

First rec!

 

Demeter

(85,373 posts)
2. That he is!
Mon Apr 30, 2012, 07:46 PM
Apr 2012

Makes McCain look like a slacker. And Romney hasn't even picked a running mate yet.

jimlup

(7,968 posts)
10. Don't forget that it was the Repukes who put up Bush...
Mon Apr 30, 2012, 08:42 PM
Apr 2012

I'm 54 and in my life he still stands apart as the most repulsively awful candidate... and much worse.

tclambert

(11,080 posts)
3. He's Marie Antoinette running for President.
Mon Apr 30, 2012, 07:51 PM
Apr 2012

"You know, if some people have trouble obtaining bread, they should consider substituting cake. If they have trouble affording cake, they could borrow money from their parents."

Warpy

(110,900 posts)
19. Reagan and Stupid were worse
Mon Apr 30, 2012, 10:26 PM
Apr 2012

Fortunately, Mitt just can't manage that "aw shucks, ma'am" folksiness so he's got a far less chance of being allowed to fuck up the country.

 

Demeter

(85,373 posts)
20. Mitt Romney, American Parasite
Mon Apr 30, 2012, 10:32 PM
Apr 2012

WANT THE DIRT ON ROMNEY AT BAIN CAPITAL? HERE IT IS!

http://www.villagevoice.com/2012-04-18/news/Mitt-Romney-american-parasite/

...The year before Romney purchased Georgetown, he mounted his career in politics, setting his sights on the biggest target in Massachusetts: the U.S. Senate seat held by Ted Kennedy...There were early signs that he might topple the Kennedy dynasty. Much like today, Romney was pitching himself as a commander of the economy, a man with the mastery to create jobs. Yet he suffered an affliction common to those atop the financial food chain: He assumed that what was good for him was good for all. Call it trickle-down blindness.

In the midst of that 1994 campaign, one of Romney's companies, American Pad & Paper, bought a plant in Marion, Indiana. At the time, it was prosperous enough to be running three shifts. Bain's first move was to fire all 258 workers, then invite them to reapply for their jobs at lower wages and a 50 percent cut in health care benefits.

"They came in and said, 'You're all fired,'" employee Randy Johnson told the Los Angeles Times. "'If you want to work for us, here's an application.' We had insurance until the end of the week. That was it. It was brutal."

But instead of reapplying, the workers went on strike. They also decided the good people of Massachusetts should know what kind of man wanted to be their senator. Suddenly, Indiana accents were showing up in Kennedy TV ads, offering tales of Romney's villainy. He was sketched as a corporate Lucifer, one who wouldn't blink at crushing little people if it meant prettying his portfolio.

Needless to say, this wasn't a proper leading man's role for a labor state like Massachusetts. Taking just 41 percent of the vote, Romney was pounded in the election. Meanwhile, the Marion plant closed just six months after Bain's purchase. The jobs were shipped to Mexico...
 

Demeter

(85,373 posts)
4. Why This May Day Matters By Sarah van Gelder
Mon Apr 30, 2012, 07:54 PM
Apr 2012

WELL, IN HER OPINION

http://www.nationofchange.org/why-may-day-matters-1335701342

If the mainstream media was confused about Occupy Wall Street in its early days in Zuccotti Park, they’re bound to be completely befuddled this May Day.

May Day already has a lot piled on it. In pre-Christian Europe, May Day was a time to dance, light bonfires, sing, and carry on in celebration of the changing seasons. May Day also marks the anniversary of the 1886 Haymarket massacre, which occurred during a Chicago strike for the eight-hour workday. Also called International Workers’ Day, it’s a holiday in more than 80 countries. And most recently, the U.S. immigrants right movement has used May 1st for massive street demonstrations and strikes aimed at reforming laws and policies that result in imprisonment, deportation, and discrimination against undocumented people.

This May Day, the Occupy movement is getting involved, calling it “The day without the 99 percent.” What will May Day look like with so many traditions riding on it?

May Day Collaborations—from Bike Caravan to Free University

The way plans are shaping up, in at least some locations around the United States, it could be big, festive, and importantly, include elements of all the May Day traditions. And it could be profoundly different than the big days of action we’ve seen in the past. In the weeks leading up to May Day, various movements have been collaborating. And people will not only be protesting, they’ll be liberating spaces for education, the arts, general assemblies, and teach-ins. There will be marches, of course. Some permitted, planned, and predictable. Others will be spontaneous, possibly disruptive. In spite of all the police planning (and collaboration with Wall Street private security forces) law enforcement will be kept guessing. There will be fairs, free food, teach-ins, music, bicycling, marches, and fiestas.

  • In New York, occupiers are leading up to May Day by organizing 99 pickets in support of workers around the city, from jazz musicians to taxi drivers to laundry workers. The LGBTQTSGNC (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Queer, Trans, Two-Spirit and Gender Non-Conforming) contingent will be out in force. They’ll be a “Guitarmy” marching from New York’s Bryant Park to Madison Square Park, with 1,000 guitars.

  • At Madison Square Park, there will be a Free University, organized by students fed up with tuition hikes and a student debt burden that’s now reached $1 trillion. Educators will bring classes to the park; there will be skill sharing and workshops.

  • At Bryant Park, they’ll be a “free” market—where everything is actually free— as well as public art and “opportunities for action.”

  • In Los Angeles, bike and car caravans will travel to the city center from the four cardinal directions. Along the way, there may be union strike action, and there will be “flash occupations,” free food, and direct action along the way, targeting the foreclosure crisis. Tuition hikes, income inequality, immigrant rights, police violence, the criminalizing of the homeless—the Los Angeles caravans each will focus on some combination of these topics.

  • In the San Francisco Bay area, nurses and social workers have declared a strike. Bridge and transportation workers and occupiers will attempt to shut down the Golden Gate Bridge. There will be “flying pickets” to shut down banks and business associations.

  • In Seattle, the group Hip Hop Occupiers to Decolonize is inviting artists, families, and the general public to a day of music, dance, live art, and speakers. There will also be marches of immigrants, occupiers, and workers.

  • Seattle occupiers will be serving free breakfasts to get the day off to a good start, something that can get you fined in Philadelphia, where the mayor has made it illegal to feed the hungry in city parks.

  • In Portland, occupiers plan to occupy a vacant home and hold a block party.

  • In Kalamazoo, Mich., they’ll be camped out on the sidewalk in front of the Bank of America, and there’s a good chance they’ll be doing civil disobedience to stop the auction of public land for hydraulic fracking.

    The list goes on and on, from small towns in Wyoming to the place where it all started, lower Manhattan...This broad range of topics and tactics may bewilder mainstream pundits, but it reflects a transformation in activism as profound as anything that’s happened in social change over the past decades. People are moving out of their isolated interest groups and causes. They’re coming together in a shared analysis, demonstrating their agreement about sources of some of our biggest problems—the overwhelming power of Wall Street and big corporations and our society’s continuing struggle with exclusion of people based on their race, gender, sexual orientation, immigration status, etc. And they’re developing shared ambitious goals and bold strategies that add up to real power and real possibility...MORE

    IS THIS WHAT IS MEANT BY DISTRACTING ONESELF TO DEATH?

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

    Sarah van Gelder is co-founder and executive editor of YES!Magazine and editor of This Changes Everything: Occupy Wall Street and the 99 Percent Movement. She will be doing live commentary on May Day at Free Speech TV, as part of a collaborative effort of independent media organized by The Media Consortium. Find May Day coverage here.



  •  

    Demeter

    (85,373 posts)
    8. Taking Back May Day: What to Expect on the Nationwide Day of Rallies, Strikes and Actions
    Mon Apr 30, 2012, 08:25 PM
    Apr 2012
    http://www.alternet.org/story/155188/taking_back_may_day%3A_what_to_expect_on_the_nationwide_day_of_rallies%2C_strikes%2C_and_actions?page=entire


    Organizers and activists have planned direct actions and mass rallies, marches and blockades, as well as mutual aid and concerts to include as many people as possible...The stickers, posters and graffiti have been popping up for months on subway walls, street signs, pay phones, and abandoned buildings, all with the same message: "May 1: Strike!" Some are gorgeously designed or illustrated works of art. Some list the activities in which one shouldn't participate: no housework, banking or work. Others rattle off the types of workers who should strike—freelance and union workers, students and teachers. But they all have the same date: May 1st. Long celebrated as International Workers' Day, long forgotten in the United States and replaced with the defanged Labor Day, May Day is once again shaping up to be a national day of action for the “99 percent,” thanks to the Occupy movement.

    The last time May 1 brought coordinated action across the country was in 2006, when immigrant workers took to the streets to remind the country what it would be like without them in the famous “Day Without an Immigrant.” May 1, 2012 has been called a general strike, but also, in direct reference to and solidarity with the immigrant rights actions of 2006, “A Day Without the 99%.” Organizers and activists, aware that actually pulling off a nationwide general strike will take years, not months, of work, have planned direct actions and mass rallies, marches and blockades, as well as mutual aid, concerts, and other events to include as wide a swath of the population as possible, providing workers who can't strike with other ways to take part...

    MUCH MORE



    WHAT DO I SEE? A LOT OF TOP-DOWN TIME-WASTING CERTAIN TO DISCREDIT THE OCCUPATION.
     

    Demeter

    (85,373 posts)
    15. May Day Started Here By Noam Chomsky
    Mon Apr 30, 2012, 09:40 PM
    Apr 2012
    http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article31200.htm

    People seem to know about May Day everywhere except where it began, here in the United States of America. That’s because those in power have done everything they can to erase its real meaning. For example, Ronald Reagan designated what he called, “Law Day”—a day of jingoist fanaticism, like an extra twist of the knife in the labor movement. Today, there is a renewed awareness, energized by the Occupy movement’s organizing, around May Day, and its relevance for reform and perhaps eventual revolution.

    If you’re a serious revolutionary, then you are not looking for an autocratic revolution, but a popular one which will move towards freedom and democracy. That can take place only if a mass of the population is implementing it, carrying it out, and solving problems. They’re not going to undertake that commitment, understandably, unless they have discovered for themselves that there are limits to reform. A sensible revolutionary will try to push reform to the limits, for two good reasons. First, because the reforms can be valuable in themselves. People should have an eight-hour day rather than a twelve-hour day. And in general, we should want to act in accord with decent ethical values. Secondly, on strategic grounds, you have to show that there are limits to reform. Perhaps sometimes the system will accommodate to needed reforms. If so, well and good. But if it won’t, then new questions arise. Perhaps that is a moment when resistance is a necessary step to overcome the barriers to justified changes. Perhaps the time has come to resort to coercive measures in defense of rights and justice, a form of self-defense. Unless the general population recognizes such measures to be a form of self-defense, they’re not going to take part in them, at least they shouldn’t.

    If you get to a point where the existing institutions will not bend to the popular will, you have to eliminate the institutions.

    May Day started here, but then became an international day in support of American workers who were being subjected to brutal violence and judicial punishment. Today, the struggle continues to celebrate May Day not as a “law day” as defined by political leaders, but as a day whose meaning is decided by the people, a day rooted in organizing and working for a better future for the whole of society.
     

    Ghost Dog

    (16,881 posts)
    25. Today, May 1st,
    Tue May 1, 2012, 02:57 AM
    May 2012

    We celebrate a holiday for the 99%. Today, we come together across lines of race, class, gender, and religion to challenge the systems that create these divisions. New Yorkers join with millions throughout the world — workers, students, immigrants, professionals, houseworkers. We take to the streets to join in a General Strike against a system which does not work for us. With our collective power we are beginning to build the world we want to see. Another world is possible!

    We call on everyone to join us: No work! No school! No shopping! Take the streets!

    http://maydaynyc.org/

    “Of course (Goldman employees) are paying attention to it, but less now than previously,” said the VP, adding that Occupy "had their moment in the sun and I think it faded." The source was skeptical protesters would actually be able to shut down the bank, saying, "They’re so obvious when they try to get into our office. They have dreads and they haven’t showered in days."

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/30/occupy-wall-street-may-day-general-strike_n_1464879.html?ref=chicago&ir=Chicago

     

    Demeter

    (85,373 posts)
    5. Is It Possible To Build An Economy Without Jobs?
    Mon Apr 30, 2012, 08:00 PM
    Apr 2012

    I'M ASSUMING THAT IS A SARCASTIC, FACETIOUS THEORETICAL, RHETORICAL QUESTION...

    Humans will always work. But that whole employee-employer thing is optional. It's time to start looking for another model...Suppose that something caused iTunes, Sony Music, "American Idol," SiriusXM and every other commercial music entity to disappear. Would humans still make music? Of course we would.

    Although capitalists would prefer we think otherwise, human ingenuity created capitalism—not the other way around. And work long precedes the existence of the capitalist system of jobs. Like music and art, work is intrinsic to the human condition. It is essential not just to our survival but to our progress as a species. It is something we do naturally, regardless of the economic and political systems in place at any given time or place in human history.

    Of all the systems that contain and define our lives, perhaps the most opaque is the job system. While it is common for us to think about our individual job—or the lack thereof—it is rare that we consider the job system itself. It seems to us that humans have always been either employers or employees -- and we always will be. It’s the ultimate TINA (There Is No Alternative).

    Who do you work for and what do you do are interchangeable questions in daily social discourse....

    AS SOMEONE WHO HAS WORKED WITHOUT A "BOSS" FOR 20+ YEARS, I FIND THIS ARTICLE DEMEANING TO EVERYONE...BUT YOUR TASTES MAY VARY....

    I TAKE IT BACK--THIS GUY IS A MORON, EVEN IF HE DOES LIVE IN MICHIGAN.

    Tansy_Gold

    (17,815 posts)
    17. I just couldn't help myself.
    Mon Apr 30, 2012, 10:15 PM
    Apr 2012

    I mean, there it was, in all its glory, just BEGGING me to put it into the thread.

    Who was I to resist?

     

    Demeter

    (85,373 posts)
    7. Why Low Minimum Wages Kill Jobs and Crush Living Standards for Everyone By Marshall Auerback
    Mon Apr 30, 2012, 08:18 PM
    Apr 2012
    http://www.alternet.org/story/155132/why_low_minimum_wages_kill_jobs_and_crush_living_standards_for_everyone?page=entire

    Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa, has introduced a bill to raise the federal minimum wage to $9.80 from its present level of $7.25. Polls are showing many voters in favor, though they are confused about what it would mean for the job market. The truth is that a move would be good for a slow economy and have a positive impact on the jobs crisis. Naturally, this has led to the usual cries of opposition, largely based on the notion that raising the minimum wage hurts the very people it is supposed to help. Typical of this view is a letter to the New York Times from Michael Saltsman, a fellow at the Employment Policies Institute, a business-backed nonprofit research group (surprise!). Saltsman trots out the old canards against the minimum wage, claiming that research indicates that a minimum wage increase "simply doesn’t help the poor — in fact, it hurts them." He cites studies which showed that states with their minimum wages between 2003 and 2007 found no associated decline in state poverty rates. Saltsman gives three reasons for this:

  • A majority of working-age individuals who live in poverty don’t work, and thus cannot benefit from the raise.
  • A clear majority of those who do earn the minimum wage live in households that aren’t in poverty.
  • Less skilled and less experienced employees lose employment opportunities when the cost to hire and train them rises as a result of a minimum-wage increase.

    Let’s take these arguments in turn. Implicit in the first point is that a majority of working-age individuals don’t work because they choose not to (i.e. they are lazy scroungers), or because unemployment is caused by laziness or lack of training. The argument they often use is that “I can get a job, therefore all the unemployed could get jobs if only they tried harder, or got better education and training.” The way I go about demonstrating that fallacy is a dogs-and-bones example. Say we have 10 dogs and we bury nine bones in the backyard. We send the dogs out to find bones. At least one dog will come back without a bone. We decide that the problem is lack of training. We put that dog through rigorous training in the latest bone-finding techniques. We bury nine bones and send the 10 dogs out again. The trained dog ends up with a bone, but some other dog comes back without a bone (empty-mouthed, so to speak). The problem is that there are not enough bones and jobs to go around. The “bones” in the jobs discussion are insufficient spending power in the economy. It is certainly true that a well-trained and highly motivated jobseeker can usually find a job. But that is no evidence that aggregate unemployment is caused by laziness or lack of training. And besides, we could easily determine how much unemployment is truly voluntary. The government could serve as the “employer of last resort” under a job guarantee program modeled on the WPA (the Works Progress Administration, in existence from 1935 to 1943) and the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps, 1933-1942). The program would offer a job to any American who was ready and willing to work at the federal minimum wage, plus legislated benefits. No time limits. No means testing. No minimum education or skill requirements.

    It's hard to believe that reducing or even eliminating the minimum wage (which is the corollary of Saltsman’s point), would actually enhance employment, when the problem is a basic lack of demand. Business will not hire more workers until it has more sales. Consumers will not spend more until they’ve got more jobs. A private-sector recovery requires 300,000 new jobs every month. But the private sector doesn’t need 300,000 new workers per month until there exists sufficient spending power in the economy to induce them to hire those workers. How is retaining a static, or reduced minimum wage, going to achieve this? Higher wages means higher income and thus higher consumption spending, which induces firms to employ more labor. So the truth is that economic theory does not tell us that raising minimum wages will lead to more unemployment, indeed, theory tells us it can go the other way—raising the minimum wage could increase employment. That’s one of the reasons why Henry Ford believed in paying his workers a decent wage: so that they could buy his product. To be sure, even an increase in the minimum wage to $12 or $15 an hour is not going to provide the means to purchase a Ford (or GM) today. And so what if, as Saltsman argues, the workers earning this minimum wage are not living in poverty? Does that mean they wouldn’t spend the money derived from an increased minimum wage? I wonder if Saltsman would also argue that tax cuts across the board are unnecessary because most of the people who receive them are not living in poverty? That argument is a red herring. The truth is, if you earn your money through wages (unlike many of the 1 percent, who earn through things like investments and a tax system biased in favor of capital gains over income) then a higher wage, minimum or otherwise, would mean that you'd spend the additional dollars, creating jobs for other workers. You'd pay down your mortgages and car loans, getting yourself out of debt. You’d pay more taxes — on sales and property, mostly — thereby relieving the fiscal crises of states and localities. More teachers, police and firefighters would keep their jobs. America would get a virtuous cycle toward higher employment and, more importantly, the cycle would be based on a policy which creates higher incomes, not higher debt via credit expansion.

    Then there's the common belief that minimum wages cause unemployment, which relates to Saltman’s third point – namely that less skilled and less experienced employees lose employment opportunities when the cost to hire and train them rises as a result of a minimum-wage increase. It is at least partly true that for an individual firm, higher wages reduce the number of workers hired. But we cannot extrapolate that to the economy as a whole. The issue of eroding wage competitiveness, which allegedly follows from a higher minimum wage, doesn’t really apply to jobs which offer the minimum wage. It might apply to areas such as manufactured goods and traded services like insurance and banking. But these are sectors in which most people already earn far more than the minimum wage. As far as the minimum wage goes, the jobs we’re talking about are in non-traded services like checkout clerks, haircutters, domestic help, and food-service workers. When checkout clerks and cooks earn more in wages, then businesses start getting the sales required to induce them to hire more workers. And if sales are robust enough, then guess what? Even more workers will be hired, or wages will actually be increased.

    The point is: wages are a source of demand, as well as a cost input. Reduce wages and demand plummets, which more than overrides any cost savings derived from paying less to workers (especially given today's paltry minimum wage, which is hardly a living wage for any American). Let's be clear; Americans have never embraced welfare. For better or worse, our nation has always preferred a more libertarian path: self-help, personal responsibility, individual initiative. As a result, our welfare programs have always been stingy, temporary and purposely demeaning. But maintaining the minimum wage at today’s ridiculously depressed level does not enhance anybody’s employment prospects. In fact, it makes it worse, because it sucks demand out of the economy and minimizes the chances of those now receiving unemployment benefits or other assistance to quickly get back into the workforce, to "pull themselves up by their own bootstraps," as conservatives like to say. They cannot do that when our work force continues to focus on policies which merely enhance the incomes of the top 1 percent.

    THIS ONE IS NOT AN IDIOT...
  •  

    Demeter

    (85,373 posts)
    13. Buy your way to Heaven! The Catholic Church brings back indulgences
    Mon Apr 30, 2012, 09:30 PM
    Apr 2012

    SAY IT AIN'T SO, RATSO! NOT THE ONION, ALAS!

    http://www.dailyfinance.com/2009/02/10/buy-your-way-to-heaven-the-catholic-church-brings-back-indulgen/

    These days, you can get a deal on anything. Even salvation! Pope Benedict has announced that his faithful can once again pay the Catholic Church to ease their way through Purgatory and into the Gates of Heaven. Never mind that Martin Luther fired up the Reformation because of them: Plenary Indulgences are back.

    The New York Times reports that even though the church officially broke with the age-old practice -- you do something good, and the Church will help absolve you -- in 1960, the Pope has quietly reintroduced it. The Catholic Church had technically banned the practice of selling indulgences as long ago as 1567. As the Times points out, a monetary donation wouldn't go amiss toward earning an indulgence. It writes, "charitable contributions, combined with other acts, can help you earn one." You can even buy indulgences this way for loved ones who are already dead, greasing their way to Heaven by doing something for the Church here on Earth.

    Why would the Catholic Church agree to this reversal? It wouldn't be the harsh economy, would it, or the church's fading influence? Not at all, says a Brooklyn bishop. "Because there is sin in the world," he told the newspaper.

    SO THE POPE DECIDED TO CORNER THE MARKET!

    AnneD

    (15,774 posts)
    48. Can sin eaters be far behind......
    Tue May 1, 2012, 08:32 AM
    May 2012

    Rod Sterling was a prophet.

    A May Day kick from someone that has to be working today but supports my brothers and sisters, especially those striking Nurses.

     

    Demeter

    (85,373 posts)
    14. 25 Horrible Statistics About The U.S. Economy That Barack Obama Does Not Want You To Know
    Mon Apr 30, 2012, 09:36 PM
    Apr 2012
    http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/25-horrible-statistics-about-the-u-s-economy-that-barack-obama-does-not-want-you-to-know?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=25-horrible-statistics-about-the-u-s-economy-that-barack-obama-does-not-want-you-to-know

    The human capacity for self-delusion truly is remarkable. Most people out there end up believing exactly what they want to believe even when the truth is staring them right in the face. Take the U.S. economy for example. Barack Obama wants to believe that his policies have worked and that the U.S. economy is improving. So that is what he is telling the American people. The mainstream media wants to believe that Barack Obama is a good president and that his policies make sense and so they are reporting that we are experiencing an economic recovery. A very large segment of the U.S. population still fully supports Barack Obama and they want to believe that the economy is getting better so they are buying the propaganda that the mainstream media is feeding them. But is the U.S. economy really improving? The truth is that it is not. The rate of employment among working age Americans is exactly where it was two years ago and household incomes have actually gone down while Obama has been president. Home ownership levels and home prices continue to decline. Meanwhile, food and gasoline continue to become even more expensive. The percentage of Americans that are dependent on the government is at an all-time record high and the U.S. national debt has risen by more than 5 trillion dollars under Obama. We simply have not seen the type of economic recovery that we have seen after every other economic recession since World War II.

    The horrible statistics about the U.S. economy that you are about to read are not talked about much by the mainstream media. They would rather be "positive" and "upbeat" about the direction that things are headed. But lying to the American people is not going to help them. If you are speeding in a car toward a 500 foot cliff, you don't need someone to cheer you on. Instead, you need someone to slam on the brakes. The cold, hard reality of the matter is that the U.S. economy is in far worse shape than it was four or five years ago. We have never come close to recovering from the last recession and another one will be here soon. The following are 25 horrible statistics about the U.S. economy that Barack Obama does not want you to know....

    #1 The percentage of Americans that own homes is dropping rapidly. According to Gallup, the current level of homeownership in the United States is the lowest that Gallup has ever measured.

    #2 Home prices in the U.S. continue to fall like a rock as well. They have declined for six months in a row and are now down a total of 35 percent from the peak of the housing bubble. The last time that home prices in the United States were this low was back in 2002.

    #3 Last year, an astounding 53 percent of all U.S. college graduates under the age of 25 were either unemployed or underemployed.

    #4 Back in 2007, about 10 percent of all unemployed Americans had been out of work for 52 weeks or longer. Today, that number is above 30 percent.

    #5 When Barack Obama first became president, the number of "long-term unemployed workers" in the United States was 2.6 million. Today, it is 5.3 million.

    #6 The average duration of unemployment in the United States is about three times as long as it was back in the year 2000.

    #7 Despite what the mainstream media would have us to believe, the truth is that the percentage of working age Americans that are employed is not increasing. Back in March 2010, 58.5 percent of all working age Americans were employed. In March 2011, 58.5 percent of all working age Americans were employed. In March 2012, 58.5 percent of all working age Americans were employed. So how can Barack Obama and the mainstream media claim that the employment situation in the United States is getting better? The employment rate is still essentially exactly where it was when the last recession supposedly ended.

    #8 Back in 1950, more than 80 percent of all men in the United States had jobs. Today, less than 65 percent of all men in the United States have jobs.

    #9 In 1962, 28 percent of all jobs in America were manufacturing jobs. In 2011, only 9 percent of all jobs in America were manufacturing jobs.

    #10 In some areas of Detroit, Michigan you can buy a three bedroom home for just $500.

    #11 According to one recent survey, approximately one-third of all Americans are not paying their bills on time at this point.

    #12 Since Barack Obama entered the White House, the price of gasoline has risen by more than 100 percent.

    #13 The student loan debt bubble continues to expand at a very frightening pace. Recently it was announced that total student loan debt in the United States has passed the one trillion dollar mark.

    #14 Incredibly, one out of every four jobs in the United States pays $10 an hour or less at this point.

    #15 Household incomes all over the United States continue to fall. After adjusting for inflation, median household income in America has declined by 7.8 percent since December 2007.

    #16 Over the past several decades, government dependence has risen to unprecedented heights in the United States. The following is how I described the explosive growth of social welfare benefits in one recent article....

    Back in 1960, social welfare benefits made up approximately 10 percent of all salaries and wages. In the year 2000, social welfare benefits made up approximately 21 percent of all salaries and wages. Today, social welfare benefits make up approximately 35 percent of all salaries and wages.

    #17 In November 2008, 30.8 million Americans were on food stamps. Today, more than 46 million Americans are on food stamps.

    #18 Right now, more than 25 percent of all American children are on food stamps.

    #19 According to the U.S. Census Bureau, today 49 percent of all Americans live in a home that receives some form of benefits from the federal government.

    #20 Over the next 75 years, Medicare is facing unfunded liabilities of more than 38 trillion dollars. That comes to $328,404 for each and every household in the United States.

    #21 During the first quarter of 2012, U.S. public debt rose by 359.1 billion dollars. U.S. GDP only rose by 142.4 billion dollars.

    #22 At this point, the U.S. national debt is rising by more than 2 million dollars every single minute.

    #23 The U.S. national debt has risen by more than 5 trillion dollars since the day that Barack Obama first took office. In a little more than 3 years Obama has added more to the national debt than the first 41 presidents combined.

    #24 The Federal Reserve bought up approximately 61 percent of all government debt issued by the U.S. Treasury Department during 2011.

    #25 The Federal Reserve continues to systematically destroy the value of the U.S. dollar. Since 1970, the U.S. dollar has lost more than 83 percent of its value.

    But the horrible economic statistics only tell part of the story.

    In communities all over America there is a feeling that something fundamental has changed. Businesses that have been around for generations are shutting their doors and there is a lot of fear in the air. The following is a brief excerpt from a recent interview with Richard Yamarone, the senior economist at Bloomberg Brief....

    You have to listen to what the small businesses are telling you and right now they are telling you, ‘Hey, I’m the head of a 3rd or 4th generation, 75 or 100 year old business, and I’ve got to shut the doors’ or ‘I’ve got to let people go. And if I’m hiring anybody back, it’s only on a temporary basis.’

    Sometimes they do this through a hiring firm so that they can sidestep paying unemployment benefit insurance. So that’s what’s really going on at the grassroots level of the economy. Very, very, grossly different from what you’re seeing in some of these numbers coming out in earnings releases.”


    All over the country, millions of hard working Americans are desperately looking for work. They have been told that "the recession is over", but they are still finding it incredibly difficult to find anyone that will hire them. The following example is from a recent CNN article....

    Joann Cotton, a 54-year-old Columbus, Mississippi, resident, was one of those faces of poverty we met on the tour. Unemployed for three years, Joann has gone from making "$60,000 a year to less than $15,000 overnight." Her husband is disabled and dependent on medicines the couple can no longer afford. They rely on food stamps, which, Joann says, "is depressing as hell."

    Receiving government aid, however, has not been as depressing as her job search. Joann says she has applied for at least 300 jobs. Even though she can barely afford gas, she drives to the interviews only to learn that the employers want to hire younger candidates at low wages.

    The experiences have taken a toll: "I've aged 10 years in the three years that I've been looking for a job," Joann told us. "I want to get a job so I can just relax and exhale ... but I can't. After a while you just give up."


    Meanwhile, Barack Obama and his family continue to live the high life at the expense of the U.S. taxpayer. Even many Democrats are starting to get very upset about this. The following is from a recent article by Paul Bedard....

    Blue collar Democratic voters, stuck taking depressing “staycations” because they can’t afford gas and hotels, are resentful of the first family’s 17 lavish vacations around the world and don’t want their tax dollars paying for the Obamas’ holidays, according to a new analysis of swing voters.

    It simply is not appropriate for the Obamas to be spending millions upon millions upon millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars on luxury vacations when so many Americans are deeply suffering. But Barack Obama does not want you to know about any of this stuff. He just wants you to buy his empty propaganda one more time so that he can continue to occupy the White House for another four years.

    AnneD

    (15,774 posts)
    58. When I first starting posting here on SMW years age....
    Tue May 1, 2012, 09:38 AM
    May 2012

    I said I did not know much about economics but I would be happy to report the on the ground information. This was in the first GWB down turn. I was made to feel that even my humble observations were valuable and that I was welcome.

    I have a very clear understanding of the economy and my place in it. So I will go back and give you a ground report from Houston.

    As you know, things have been tight here but we have not suffered during this downturn as badly as other parts of the country.

    But don't believe all this happy talk and don't let them blow smoke up you skirt. I live in a very cheap apartment complex. We are now at full capacity, but here is the interesting thing-there are many out of state tags on the cars parked here in the complex. I count an increasing number from far away...and not just La., Miss., Ala., and Georgia on the drive in in the morning. I see Mo., Del., Fla., Ca., Ark, Okla., Penn., just to name a few and I don't think they are vacationing! I think it is a sign of desperation.

    When I have gone shopping for my trip last week, I was frequently the only customer in the store. A purchase over $50 was a big sale. There is hardly any traffic after the rush hour. And this is in an area that is doing well. We patronize many of the places we always have, and they let us know how much they appreciate it. We have lost some but they held out for a long time.

    So that is how it is in Houston these days. We have been spinning our wheels just to stay in the same spot.

     

    Demeter

    (85,373 posts)
    16. Welcome to the Asylum By Chris Hedges
    Mon Apr 30, 2012, 09:45 PM
    Apr 2012
    http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article31208.htm

    When civilizations start to die they go insane.

    THAT JUST ABOUT COVERS IT. OF COURSE, MR. HEDGES DID EXPAND UPON THIS THOUGHT...

    Let the ice sheets in the Arctic melt. Let the temperatures rise. Let the air, soil and water be poisoned. Let the forests die. Let the seas be emptied of life. Let one useless war after another be waged. Let the masses be thrust into extreme poverty and left without jobs while the elites, drunk on hedonism, accumulate vast fortunes through exploitation, speculation, fraud and theft. Reality, at the end, gets unplugged. We live in an age when news consists of Snooki’s pregnancy, Hulk Hogan’s sex tape and Kim Kardashian’s denial that she is the naked woman cooking eggs in a photo circulating on the Internet. Politicians, including presidents, appear on late night comedy shows to do gags and they campaign on issues such as creating a moon colony. “[A]t times when the page is turning,” Louis-Ferdinand Celine wrote in “Castle to Castle,” “when History brings all the nuts together, opens its Epic Dance Halls! hats and heads in the whirlwind! Panties overboard!”

    The quest by a bankrupt elite in the final days of empire to accumulate greater and greater wealth, as Karl Marx observed, is modern society’s version of primitive fetishism. This quest, as there is less and less to exploit, leads to mounting repression, increased human suffering, a collapse of infrastructure and, finally, collective death. It is the self-deluded, those on Wall Street or among the political elite, those who entertain and inform us, those who lack the capacity to question the lusts that will ensure our self-annihilation, who are held up as exemplars of intelligence, success and progress. The World Health Organization calculates that one in four people in the United States suffers from chronic anxiety, a mood disorder or depression—which seems to me to be a normal reaction to our march toward collective suicide. Welcome to the asylum.

    When the most basic elements that sustain life are reduced to a cash product, life has no intrinsic value. The extinguishing of “primitive” societies, those that were defined by animism and mysticism, those that celebrated ambiguity and mystery, those that respected the centrality of the human imagination, removed the only ideological counterweight to a self-devouring capitalist ideology. Those who held on to pre-modern beliefs, such as Native Americans, who structured themselves around a communal life and self-sacrifice rather than hoarding and wage exploitation, could not be accommodated within the ethic of capitalist exploitation, the cult of the self and the lust for imperial expansion. The prosaic was pitted against the allegorical. And as we race toward the collapse of the planet’s ecosystem we must restore this older vision of life if we are to survive.

    The war on the Native Americans, like the wars waged by colonialists around the globe, was waged to eradicate not only a people but a competing ethic. The older form of human community was antithetical and hostile to capitalism, the primacy of the technological state and the demands of empire. This struggle between belief systems was not lost on Marx. “The Ethnological Notebooks of Karl Marx” is a series of observations derived from Marx’s reading of works by historians and anthropologists. He took notes about the traditions, practices, social structure, economic systems and beliefs of numerous indigenous cultures targeted for destruction. Marx noted arcane details about the formation of Native American society, but also that “lands were owned by the tribes in common, while tenement-houses were owned jointly by their occupants.” He wrote of the Aztecs, “Commune tenure of lands; Life in large households composed of a number of related families.” He went on, “… reasons for believing they practiced communism in living in the household.” Native Americans, especially the Iroquois, provided the governing model for the union of the American colonies, and also proved vital to Marx and Engel’s vision of communism....MORE

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

    Chris Hedges, whose column is published Mondays on Truthdig, spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He has reported from more than 50 countries and has worked for The Christian Science Monitor, National Public Radio, The Dallas Morning News and The New York Times, for which he was a foreign correspondent for 15 years

    Response to Tansy_Gold (Original post)

     

    Demeter

    (85,373 posts)
    42. Don't worry, you didn't miss much
    Tue May 1, 2012, 07:26 AM
    May 2012

    Just a bunch of poo-throwing primates...

    I had looked at that thread last night; it hasn't improved with age.

     

    Demeter

    (85,373 posts)
    23. that was the grimmiest, least apple-polishing report I've heard yet
    Mon Apr 30, 2012, 11:56 PM
    Apr 2012

    the shine, the varnish, and the paint are coming off the engines of the global economy.

    Fuddnik

    (8,846 posts)
    24. With the state of Japans economy, and all their other problems,
    Tue May 1, 2012, 12:39 AM
    May 2012

    How in the hell can they give the IMF $60 billion!!!???

    girl gone mad

    (20,634 posts)
    28. They can print it.
    Tue May 1, 2012, 04:57 AM
    May 2012

    Japan would like to weaken the yen and create some inflation since they've struggled with deflationary forces for decades now.

    girl gone mad

    (20,634 posts)
    27. Happy May Day!
    Tue May 1, 2012, 04:51 AM
    May 2012

    Lots of selling into the close on the Nikkei, some weak PMI reports out of the UK and China. US markets are set to open slightly positive.

     

    Ghost Dog

    (16,881 posts)
    30. 1 May! ... and... Pound hits two-year high against euro
    Tue May 1, 2012, 05:20 AM
    May 2012

    The pound was also stronger against the US dollar, where last week's weaker-than-expected growth figures for the first three months of 2012 were followed by a closely watched barometer of business in Chicago. Although figures last week showed the UK economy suffering from a double-dip recession, dealers are now anxious that the recovery in the world's biggest economy is losing momentum.

    City analysts said the rise in the value of the pound was not a vote of confidence in the UK but rather a vote of no confidence in the eurozone, where growth prospects are deemed to be worse than they are in Britain. Speculation that the Bank of England will be reluctant to expand its £325bn quantitative easing programme has also underpinned the pound over the past month, a period when pressure has mounted on bond markets in Spain and Italy.

    Valentin Marinov, currency analyst with CitiFX in New York, said the next few days could be crucial for the pound because the monthly Purchasing Manager Index (PMI) surveys starting on Tuesday of manufacturing, construction and services would be closely watched for evidence that last week's figures showing a 0.2% drop in gross domestic product in the first three months of the year gave a false picture of the true state of the economy.

    "The reason for that is the fact that investors largely ignored the very disappointing quarter one GDP data released last week on the grounds that the PMIs were largely upbeat. Indications that the sentiment indicators declined more than expected in April could undermine to a degree market confidence that the UK growth figures will be revised significantly to the upside in coming weeks. In turn, renewed growth concerns could erode some of the interest rate advantage of sterling ahead of the regular Bank of England meeting and the release of the Bank's inflation report in the next couple of weeks."

    Dealers are looking to see whether the pound can break through €1.24 against the euro, a level it has not reached since 2008, the year the UK began its deepest recession since the second world war. Sterling lost 25% of its value during the financial and economic crisis of 2007-09, making exports more competitive but adding to upward pressure on the cost of living through more expensive imports.

    Further increases in sterling's exchange rate will make it harder for the government to achieve its aim of export-led growth, an objective that has already been put in jeopardy by the sovereign debt crisis in the eurozone. The Spanish government on Monday said the economy contracted by 0.3% for a second successive quarter, while the authorities in Greece reported that retail sales in February were down 13% on a year earlier. Markets are also nervous about the results of the forthcoming Greek general election and the French presidential race.

    /... http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/apr/30/pound-two-year-high-euro

     

    Ghost Dog

    (16,881 posts)
    31. UK Manufacturing Growth Slows In April
    Tue May 1, 2012, 05:22 AM
    May 2012

    LONDON (dpa-AFX) - The UK's manufacturing sector growth slowed in April amid sharp decline in new export orders, a survey by Markit Economics revealed Tuesday.

    The Markit/Chartered Institute of Purchasing & Supply (CIPS) purchasing managers' index for the factory sector fell to 50.5 in April from a revised 51.9 in March. Economists expected a reading of 51.5, down from March's initial score of 52.1.,,

    ... Total new orders fell slightly for the first time in five months in April. New export business fell at the steepest since May 2009, due to weaker demand from mainland Europe, the US and East Asia.

    Manufacturing output expanded for the fifth month running in April, but the rate of increase eased to its weakest in the year-to-date.

    /... http://www.finanznachrichten.de/nachrichten-2012-05/23402876-uk-manufacturing-growth-slows-in-april-020.htm

     

    Ghost Dog

    (16,881 posts)
    33. Uh huh... Pound Extends Slide On Weak UK PMI
    Tue May 1, 2012, 05:25 AM
    May 2012

    BRUSSELS (dpa-AFX) - The pound extended its decline against other major currencies on Tuesday's early European deals after a report showed that the country's manufacturing PMI dropped more than expected in April...

    ... The pound that closed yesterday's deals at 1.6237 against the greenback reached a 4-day low of 1.6194. The next downside target level for the pound is seen at 1.615.

    Against its European and Swiss counterparts, the pound fell to 6-day lows of 0.8200 and 1.4658 with 0.825 and 1.46 seen as the next downside target levels, respectively. At Monday's close, the pound traded at 0.8156 against the euro and 1.4737 against the franc.

    The pound reached a new 2-week low of 129.13 against the yen, compared to Monday's close of 129.62. On the downside, the pound may target 128.5 level.

    From the U.S., ISM manufacturing data for April and construction spending for March are set for release in the New York morning session.

    /... http://www.finanznachrichten.de/nachrichten-2012-05/23402981-pound-extends-slide-on-weak-uk-pmi-020.htm

    Edit:

    xchrom

    (108,903 posts)
    29. Defiant Rajoy warns he will push ahead with reforms “every Friday”
    Tue May 1, 2012, 05:13 AM
    May 2012
    http://elpais.com/elpais/2012/04/29/inenglish/1335725919_666170.html

    As tens of thousands of people across Spain took to the streets on Sunday to protest against the government’s education and health care spending cuts, Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy issued a defiant statement saying he would continue with his reform agenda.

    Speaking at the Popular Party’s Madrid regional congress, Rajoy told delegates: “There will be reforms announced this Friday, and every Friday after that, and they will be major reforms.”

    He continued: “I understand perfectly. A lot of people cannot understand the decisions that I am taking at the moment. But the problem is the crisis, unemployment, the recession, and disordered public finances. We have to make structural changes and to take root and branch measures.”

    The Rajoy government has introduced stinging austerity measures in its first three months in office. Unemployment has continued to rise in Spain, and is at a euro-zone high of 24.4 percent. More than half of Spaniards under 25 years old are jobless. On Friday Rajoy announced a new set of tax hikes to come into effect next year, saying he had “no alternative.”

    xchrom

    (108,903 posts)
    32. Indians say their lives are getting worse, despite fast economic growth
    Tue May 1, 2012, 05:24 AM
    May 2012
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/indians-say-their-lives-are-getting-worse-despite-fast-economic-growth/2012/04/30/gIQAFfxgrT_story.html


    Kuni Takahashi/Bloomberg - New Gallup poll shows the number of Indians who rated themselves as “suffering” rose this year to 31 percent, or 240 million people.

    NEW DELHI — Indians have become much more unhappy about their lives in the past four years, despite one of the world’s fastest rates of economic growth, a survey by the Gallup polling organization showed Monday.

    The deterioration appears to have been driven partly by the expectation, created by politicians and the media, that India’s boom would dramatically improve its citizens’ standard of living.


    When many Indians realized that the boom was not significantly benefiting them, their sense of well-being and optimism about the future seemed to collapse.

    “It is very dangerous to create expectations and not meet them,” said Rajesh Srinivasan, Gallup’s regional research director for Asia and the Middle East.

    AnneD

    (15,774 posts)
    64. "It is very dangerous to create expectations...
    Tue May 1, 2012, 04:24 PM
    May 2012

    and not meet them,” said Rajesh Srinivasan, Gallup’s regional research director for Asia and the Middle East.

    Wonder if Obama learn this from the last election. I know I did.

    xchrom

    (108,903 posts)
    34. It Looks Like The Global Economy Is Rolling Over
    Tue May 1, 2012, 06:46 AM
    May 2012
    http://www.businessinsider.com/is-the-global-economy-rolling-over-2012-5

    In the past several hours, we've received two big negative datapoints indicating the world is slowing.
    First, South Korean export data -- which is one of Jim O'Neill's favorite datapoints -- was very weak.
    Then UK PMI just came out, and confirmed that exports were slowing to Europe, Asia, and the US.
    This is on top of weak Dallas Fed and Chicago PMI numbers yesterday.
    The one exception: A decent showing from the Chinese PMI, which showed orders and exports strong.
    We'll known a lot more over the next 24 hours.
    US ISM is coming out in a few hours, and then we get the rest of global PMIs starting tonight. The overall temperature of the world's economy will be more clear.


    Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/is-the-global-economy-rolling-over-2012-5#ixzz1tc7Idd17
     

    Demeter

    (85,373 posts)
    37. Japan stocks hurt by yen; rate cut lifts Australia
    Tue May 1, 2012, 07:08 AM
    May 2012
    http://www.marketwatch.com/story/japan-down-but-australia-rises-in-asian-trade-2012-04-30?siteid=YAHOOB

    Japanese stocks fell Tuesday as the yen strengthened and some disappointing earnings reports weighed, while shares in Sydney jumped after a bigger-than-expected interest rate cut from the Reserve Bank of Australia...

    The Japanese share market, returning Tuesday from a three-day weekend, saw losses for exporters as the U.S. dollar USDJPY +0.08% fell below the ¥80 mark overnight for the first time since late February.

    The dollar’s weakness against the Japanese currency, along with mild losses for U.S. shares, followed a soft reading on Chicago manufacturing and further worries about the euro zone....
     

    Demeter

    (85,373 posts)
    61. I think the Bots have taken over
    Tue May 1, 2012, 10:45 AM
    May 2012

    Look at Europe's STOXXS, look at gold, silver, currencies...it's not driven by emotion or fact, but by machine!

    xchrom

    (108,903 posts)
    36. MAY DAY: Japan Tumbles, Europe Closed, US Futures Going Nowhere
    Tue May 1, 2012, 07:01 AM
    May 2012
    http://www.businessinsider.com/morning-markets-may-1-2012-5



    It's May 1, so basically all of Europe is closed.
    And a large swath of Asia is closed for holidays as well.
    But Japan did trade last night, and it lost big following that weak Chinese PMI report. The Nikkei was down 1.78%.
    And meanwhile US futures are going nowhere.
    Things should pick up later with the release of the US ISM.
    The one other big event overnight: The Reserve Bank of Australia cut rates by a greater-than-anticipated by basis points. The market was only looking for 25.
    UPDATE: Just out: UK PMI came in much weaker than expected, and the British Pound is falling.


    Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/morning-markets-may-1-2012-5#ixzz1tcB7OLty
     

    Demeter

    (85,373 posts)
    38. N.H. To The Unemployed: Try An Unpaid Internship
    Tue May 1, 2012, 07:12 AM
    May 2012

    NOW YOU CAN LIVE FREE AND DIE! WAY TO GO, NH! SO GLAD I'M OUTTA THERE.

    http://www.npr.org/2012/05/01/150906124/n-h-to-the-unemployed-try-an-unpaid-internship?ft=1&f=1001

    Electropac, a firm that makes printed circuit boards in New Hampshire, once had 500 paid employees. Today, it has 34. But thanks to a state program for the unemployed, it also now offers unpaid internships.

    Across the country, unpaid internships are on the rise for older adults looking to change careers or rebound from layoffs. In New Hampshire, a state-run program encourages the unemployed to take six-week internships at companies with the hope of getting a permanent job.

    In New Hampshire, close to 600 people have already interned at 275 companies in what's called the Return to Work program. The state says more than 60 percent of the interns received jobs offers at the companies where they trained....

    ....Robert McIntosh is a career counselor across the state border in Lowell, Mass. He says this unpaid internship might help Nyberg close any gaps in her resume. "It's better than nothing, really. And it's better than sitting at home," he says. But McIntosh also says: Buyer, beware. "What they really need to look out for," he says, "is to make sure that the person who is supposed to be trained at the company is actually getting trained — and not being used just for free labor."

    AnneD

    (15,774 posts)
    54. Listened to it on the way in....
    Tue May 1, 2012, 08:59 AM
    May 2012

    Only 60% found jobs in NH. It is worse in other states. Too many companies do use it as a source of free labor.

    I am fast losing patience with politicians...OF ANY IDEOLOGY....and I have a job. Someone needs to hold my purse-I feel the need to bitch slap some folks.

    DemReadingDU

    (16,000 posts)
    57. Free labor for temp job
    Tue May 1, 2012, 09:35 AM
    May 2012

    The first thing I thought of was the employer could hire a temp getting unemployment compensation. But the employer wouldn't hire them permanently. After that temp job was finished, then hire somebody else, again for free labor. An employer's dream, free labor rotating endlessly.

     

    Demeter

    (85,373 posts)
    39. Fed officials, hawk and dove, agree: no more easing (BUT DOES BEN CONCUR?)
    Tue May 1, 2012, 07:16 AM
    May 2012
    http://news.yahoo.com/fed-officials-hawk-dove-agree-no-more-easing-020307698--business.html

    Two top Federal Reserve officials - one with a dovish, employment-focused bent, and the other a self-avowed inflation hawk - on Monday both said they see no need for the central bank to ease monetary policy any further.

    But the comments, from San Francisco Fed President John Williams and Dallas Fed President Richard Fisher, do not mean they believe the central bank should quickly move to raise rates, which it has kept near zero for more than three years....Fisher said he would oppose the extension of Operation Twist, the Fed bond-buying program that is set to end in June, but stopped short of calling for outright monetary tightening....Williams suggested the Fed might need to push rates still lower if the U.S. unemployment rose substantially and growth slowed...
     

    Demeter

    (85,373 posts)
    40. To Cut Fuel Bill, Delta Gambles On Refinery Buy
    Tue May 1, 2012, 07:19 AM
    May 2012

    Delta's Monroe Energy LLC subsidiary will spend $100 million to make changes to the refinery to maximize the production of jet fuel. The refinery processes 185,000 barrels per day of crude oil. Delta said it will make 52,000 barrels per day of jet fuel once it's modified. Delta said it will trade the gasoline, diesel and other products of the refining process with BP and Phillps 66 locations around the U.S for another 120,000 barrels per day of jet fuel.http://www.npr.org/2012/04/30/151733695/to-cut-fuel-bill-delta-gambles-on-refinery-buy?ft=1&f=1001

    Delta Air Lines is buying a refinery in a novel, and some say risky attempt to slice $300 million a year from its escalating jet fuel bill. The airline said Monday that it is buying the refinery near Philadelphia for $150 million from Phillips 66, a refining company being spun off from ConocoPhillips. The refinery has struggled to make money, and ConocoPhillips planned to shut it down if it couldn't find a buyer.

    So why is Delta buying it?

    Fuel is the largest and most volatile expense for the major airlines. They paid an average of $2.86 a gallon for jet fuel last year, up from $2.09 in 2007, according to statistics from the Bureau of Transportation. Nobody likes to see the price of gas climb, but for airlines consuming billions of gallons a year, it can be downright crippling. Consider this: Delta's planes burned through 3.9 billion gallons of fuel last year, costing the airline $11.8 billion 36 percent of its operating expenses.

    Airlines have been trying to combat the rising fuel cost by purchasing more fuel-efficient airplanes and experimenting with different types of fuels. But neither is an immediate solution: It can take a decade to modernize an entire fleet and biofuels, which are made from plants, are not economically feasible. Airlines also try to limit their exposure to big price spikes through a process known as hedging. The catch: if prices fall dramatically, they end up losing a lot of money.

    Jet fuel has the fattest profit margins of any product that refineries make, said Delta CEO Richard Anderson, "and they're taking it from airlines." He called it a "modest investment" comparable to buying one new large jet aircraft....

    WONDER IF THE REFINERY IS ALREADY EQUIPPED TO PRODUCE JET FUEL...AND WHAT WILL THEY DO WITH THE OTHER COMPONENTS OF CRUDE? HOPE THEY HAVE THE SENSE TO BUY THE TALENT AS WELL AS THE PLANT....WELL, WHAT DO YOU KNOW? A REPORT THAT ANSWERS QUESTIONS!

    ....Delta's Monroe Energy LLC subsidiary will spend $100 million to make changes to the refinery to maximize the production of jet fuel. The refinery processes 185,000 barrels per day of crude oil. Delta said it will make 52,000 barrels per day of jet fuel once it's modified. Delta said it will trade the gasoline, diesel and other products of the refining process with BP and Phillps 66 locations around the U.S for another 120,000 barrels per day of jet fuel...The deal also includes pipelines that will help move the jet fuel to Delta's operations in the Northeast, including its hubs at LaGuardia and JFK airports in New York.

    SOUNDS LIKE DELTA IS RUN BY CREATIVE AND COMPETENT PEOPLE. GLORY BE!

     

    Demeter

    (85,373 posts)
    43. Profumo salary cut to set tone at lender
    Tue May 1, 2012, 07:27 AM
    May 2012

    The new chairman of Italy’s third-largest bank by assets has taken a big cut in salary in a bid to win support for a turnround plan at the 500-year-old Monte dei Paschi di Siena

    Read more >>
    http://link.ft.com/r/YIQXNN/DWBUFM/OFBYP/EXFVRI/R3W4AF/VU/t?a1=2012&a2=4&a3=30
     

    Demeter

    (85,373 posts)
    45. Berlin insists on eurozone austerity
    Tue May 1, 2012, 07:50 AM
    May 2012

    Germany rejects more growth-oriented policies advocated by some European leaders in face of voter anger

    Read more >>
    http://link.ft.com/r/IOCBMM/623R5N/9MEOW/97QHHO/QN45D1/JY/t?a1=2012&a2=5&a3=1

    xchrom

    (108,903 posts)
    46. Lloyds warns of long and difficult recovery
    Tue May 1, 2012, 08:08 AM
    May 2012
    http://uk.reuters.com/article/2012/05/01/uk-lloydsbank-idUKBRE8400B920120501

    (Reuters) - Lloyds warned of a long, hard economic recovery and set aside an extra 375 million pounds ($609 million) to compensate people mis-sold insurance, underscoring the challenge facing Britain's banks as they battle to recover from financial crisis.

    Lloyds, 40-percent owned by the government after a bailout during the 2008 crisis, said on Tuesday it was making progress in reducing its loan book, cutting costs and reining in bad debts - all key parts of its recovery plan.

    But its planned sale of 632 branches is dragging on, highlighting the tough market facing sellers of British banking assets, and it struck a downbeat tone about the economy, which tipped back into recession last quarter.

    "We think that the economy will be reasonably flat this year, but it is going to be a long and difficult recovery," Chief Executive Antonio Horta-Osorio said.
     

    Demeter

    (85,373 posts)
    50. N.Y., JPMorgan Sued by Council Members in Occupy Lawsuit
    Tue May 1, 2012, 08:35 AM
    May 2012
    http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-30/n-y-jpmorgan-sued-by-council-members-in-occupy-lawsuit.html

    Four New York City Council members sued the city over the handling of Occupy Wall Street protesters, claiming the police used excessive force and should be subject to an outside monitor. The Police Department made false arrests and violated free- speech rights of protesters and journalists last year, according to a complaint filed today in Manhattan federal court by the council members and 11 others. JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), Brookfield Office Properties and Mayor Michael Bloomberg are among the defendants.

    The Occupy movement in New York has held demonstrations and marches since Nov. 15, when police ousted hundreds of protesters from Zuccotti Park near Wall Street, where they had camped since Sept. 17. Protesters spread an anti-greed message, calling attention to what they say are abuses of power and wealth.

    “Through unlawful exercises of public power and misapplication of law, the NYPD has sought to prevent and has prevented plaintiffs and other citizens from exercising certain constitutional rights, including the right to public assembly and expressive speech,” according to the complaint.


    ...Occupy Wall Street demonstrators were denied access to One Chase Manhattan Plaza, which “has traditionally been used as a public space for public speech,” according to the complaint. On Oct. 12, demonstrators sought to give a large symbolic check to JPMorgan Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon, representing tax breaks he would get in New York state, according to the complaint. Police barricades and officers denied them access to the plaza, according to the complaint...

    Second Case

    In a separate federal court lawsuit, five demonstrators today sued city Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly and various officers for detaining them in an interlocking metal barricade during a protest on Nov. 30. About 100 people demonstrated in front of a Sheraton Hotel where President Barack Obama attended a fundraiser, according to the complaint. The plaintiffs, who asked that the case be certified as class-action suit, claim protesters couldn’t leave for almost two hours and were “never charged with any violation, misdemeanor or crime,” Phoebe Berg and others claimed. The police violated their rights to freedom of speech, association and assembly, and freedom from unreasonable seizure, according to the complaint. The group asked for an order barring the NYPD from the unlawful use of barricades.
     

    Demeter

    (85,373 posts)
    52. Charlotte Suspends Constitutional Free Speech, Assembly to Help Bank of America, Duke Shareholder Me
    Tue May 1, 2012, 08:42 AM
    May 2012
    http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/05/charlotte-to-suspend-constitutional-free-speech-and-assembly-protections-to-help-bank-of-america-duke-shareholder-meetings.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NakedCapitalism+%28naked+capitalism%29

    It has become pretty routine for local police to engage in thuggery and run roughshod over Constitutional protections in the name of maintaining order, which increasingly means not annoying big companies. With habeas corpus suspended, our own Attorney General maintaining the Administration has the right to kill suspected terrorists (ie, pretty much anyone) without a trial, and electronic surveillance ever on the rise, it might seem hard to get worked up about small minded suspensions of the right to make a political point in public of the sort planned in Charlotte, NC. As recounted in the Charlotte Business Journal, the City Council passed strict (meaning of questionable legality) security rules for the Democratic convention this summer. Natch, some of the big local companies seem to have gotten to the city manager, who designated the annual meetings of Bank of America and Duke Energy (May 9) the sort of “extraordinary event” that merits intrusive searches:

    Law enforcement will be given broader powers during these events to search backpacks, coolers, satchels and messenger bags. That includes briefcases and carry-on luggage — the kind with wheels often used by lawyers to transport reams of documents.

    The new ordinances also detail a list of items that are grounds for arrest. Among them: spray paint, permanent markers, hammers, crowbars, box cutters, utility knives, chains, padlocks, lumber, plastic pipe, pepper spray, mace and police scanners.

    Note that this list omits mundane items that are forbidden, such as masks and scarves. So protesting anonymously is against the law too?


    The ACLU is not happy, particularly since the city council never contemplated nor approved having shareholder meetings deemed “extraordinary events.” It’s pretty clear what will happen. The searches will be used to establish a cordon sanitaire to keep the demonstrators away from the corporate headquarters. And it isn’t hard to imagine that agit-prop toys not on the official list will be confiscated too.

    Notice how no one questions this use of public funds? Why should local governments pay for this sort of thing? Big rich companies are perfectly capable of hiring their own security goons, if safety were really an issue. It isn’t.

    This is all about demonstrating who really wields clout in the social order. The police are visibly aligned with the 1%. That’s the real message here.

     

    Demeter

    (85,373 posts)
    51. Big Employers Extorting States, Pocketing Employee Income Tax Withholding
    Tue May 1, 2012, 08:37 AM
    May 2012
    http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/05/big-employers-extorting-states-pocketing-employee-income-tax-withholding.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NakedCapitalism+%28naked+capitalism%29

    Wonder why states are broke? It isn’t just the global financial crisis induced knock-on effects of a plunge in tax receipts and a rise in social safety net payments. Nor is it just pension fund time bombs (note that despite the press hysteria, the problem is unmanageable only in a comparatively small number of states, with New Jersey way out in front, thanks to 15 years of the state stealing from the workers’ kitty, plus a decision to take big risk at exactly the wrong moment, in 2007, which resulted in large losses). A significant unrecognized culprit is companies managing to divert tax revenue from stressed states to their coffers. The device, in this case, is demanding the right to keep state income taxes withheld from employee paychecks.

    David Cay Johnson detailed this stunning development in an April 12 column and a related interview late last week (hat tip p78). He suggests that this movement is driven by banks, since financial players and private equity fund owned firms are heavily represented among these corporate welfare queens. His discovery seems to have gone largely unnoticed and I hope readers circulate this clip widely.

    &feature=player_embedded
     

    Demeter

    (85,373 posts)
    56. Legal Eagles in Cross Hairs (OF SEC)
    Tue May 1, 2012, 09:27 AM
    May 2012
    http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304868004577376391979631740.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTTopStories

    The Securities and Exchange Commission is intensifying its scrutiny of lawyers who gave a green light to certain mortgage-bond deals before the financial crisis or have tried to thwart investigations by the agency, according to people familiar with the matter. The move is at an early stage and might not result in any enforcement action by the SEC because of the difficulty proving lawyers went beyond their legal duty to clients, these people cautioned. In the past, SEC officials generally have gone after lawyers only when accusing them of active involvement in securities fraud or serious misconduct, such as faking documents in a probe. In recent months, though, some SEC officials have grown frustrated by what they claim is direct obstruction of a few investigations and a larger number of probes where lawyers coach clients in the art of resisting and rebuffing. The tactics include witnesses "forgetting" what happened and companies conducting internal investigations that scapegoat junior employees and let senior managers off the hook, agency officials say.

    "The problem of less-than-candid testimony ... is a serious one," Robert Khuzami, the SEC's director of enforcement, said at a conference last month. The stepped-up scrutiny is aimed at both internal and outside lawyers. Claudius Modesti, enforcement chief at the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, an accounting watchdog created by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, said at the same event: "We're encountering lawyers who frankly should know better." The SEC enforcement staff has recently reported more lawyers to the agency's general counsel, who can take administrative action against lawyers for alleged professional misconduct.

    The SEC hasn't disclosed the number of referrals. Only one lawyer has ever been banned for life from representing clients before the agency because of professional misconduct....The only lawyer hit with a lifetime ban by the SEC for his work on behalf of a client is Steven Altman of New York. The client was a witness in an SEC investigation, and the agency alleged that Mr. Altman suggested in a recorded phone conversation that the client's recollection of certain events might "fade" if she got a year of severance pay. Last year, an appeals court rejected Mr. Altman's bid to overturn the 2010 ban. Jeffrey Hoffman, a lawyer for Mr. Altman, couldn't be reached for comment....In December, a federal grand jury in Los Angeles indicted lawyer David Tamman on 10 criminal counts related to helping a former client cover up an alleged $20 million fraud. Prosecutors claim Mr. Tamman changed and backdating documents, removed incriminating documents from investor files and lied to SEC investigators in sworn testimony. "The truth is that my client was set up and made a scapegoat," says Stanley Stone, a lawyer for Mr. Tamman, adding that his client acted under the advice and guidance of senior lawyers at his former law firm, Nixon Peabody LLP. "We're going to prove at trial that what was done was not criminal," Mr. Stone says....A Nixon Peabody spokeswoman says Mr. Tamman was fired in 2009 "as soon as we learned that he was under SEC investigation and he failed to explain his actions to us." The law firm has asked a judge to throw out a wrongful-termination suit filed by Mr. Tamman.

    MORE DIRT

    Roland99

    (53,342 posts)
    59. ISM Manufacturing survey rises to 54.8% in April
    Tue May 1, 2012, 10:26 AM
    May 2012
    http://www.marketwatch.com/story/ism-manufacturing-survey-rises-to-548-in-april-2012-05-01?link=MW_home_latest_news

    The U.S. manufacturing sector expanded at a slightly faster pace in April, according to the closely followed ISM index. The index climbed to 54.8% last month from 53.4% in March, the Institute for Supply Management said Tuesday. Any reading over 50 indicates that more manufacturers are expanding instead of shrinking. Economists surveyed by MarketWatch had forecast the index to dip to 53.3%. The new-orders index rose to 58.2% from 54.5% in March, while the employment index edged up to 57.3% from 56.1%


    Roland99

    (53,342 posts)
    62. Oil over $106/bbl after ISM news (up a whole 1%...wow...we're booming!)
    Tue May 1, 2012, 11:22 AM
    May 2012

    Still getting mexed missages on various economic indicators but as long as there's at least one uptick somewhere, the markets rejoice and commodities surge.

    Roland99

    (53,342 posts)
    63. Dow rallies to heights not seen in more than four years
    Tue May 1, 2012, 04:07 PM
    May 2012
    http://www.marketwatch.com/story/us-stocks-start-may-on-uncertain-footing-2012-05-01?dist=afterbell

    After climbing as much as 125 points, the Dow industrials DJIA +0.50% were up 115.87 points, or 0.9%, to 13,329.50, with all but four of its 30 components rising.

    The S&P 500 SPX +0.57% climbed 14.38 points, or 1%, to 1,412.29, with energy the strongest performer of its 10 industry sectors.


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