Last edited Wed Aug 1, 2012, 06:33 AM - Edit history (1)

That's a wish, not a declarative statement.

Why don't we return Public Utilities to being Public Utilities? Good start?

You are onto something big, Hugin!

YOU MEAN, LIKE TIMMY GEITHNER?

http://news.yahoo.com/house-bill-fire-us-workers-tax-deadbeats-001622546.html

A bill to fire federal workers who are tax deadbeats passed the House on Tuesday in an attempt to confront a problem that showed little improvement in the past decade. The bill is aimed at U.S. government workers who are seriously delinquent in their federal taxes, but would exempt those trying to work out their problems with the IRS. The vote was 263-116 to send the bill to the Senate where its fate was uncertain.

Chief sponsor Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, said there were 102,794 federal employees who were delinquent with their federal taxes 2004 and only a slight drop to 98,291 in 2010 — including some 700 congressional employees. The cost to taxpayers rose from just under $600 million in 2004 to more than $1 billion by 2010, he added. The bill would make those who are seriously delinquent ineligible for federal employment, whether they're working for the government now or are applying for a job. Applicants would have to certify that they were not seriously delinquent and agencies would conduct periodic reviews of public records for tax liens.

Chaffetz said the bill would apply to "people who are just totally ignoring the law and ... not living up to their obligation, not paying their federal taxes, There ought to be more of a consequence." He added, "We're not trying to cut somebody off at the knees if they're trying to do the right thing." Chaffetz cited an IRS report that among the delinquent federal employees were 1,181 employees at the Treasury Department, 91 workers at the Federal Reserve, and nearly 6.5 percent of the employees at the U.S. Office of Government Ethics — which enforces ethics laws, but yet had the worst compliance rate among federal agencies.

Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., said the bill was unnecessary, because the IRS can levy penalties of up to 15 percent of wages until the tax debt is satisfied. "I'm not certain that this bill will have any significant impact whatsoever," she said. Maloney added that more than 96 percent of federal workers paid their taxes on time did not owe money to the government.

Chaffetz disagreed, commenting, "I wish there wasn't a need for this. But this is $1 billion in uncollected taxes." He said the delinquent taxpayers are tarnishing the rest of the federal workforce.

If there's a cliff edge out there, would somebody evil please fall off it? Before we all do?

Perhaps in this age, knowing he didn't make things worse is the best accolade we can give a man.

for my pet chickens


see previous posting
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1116&pid=19358


From the story Henny Penny: "The sky is falling"
http://www.childrenstory.info/childrenstories/hennypenny.html

My first cat was named Beast. She was black, with evil yellow eyes and double paws, and feral.

She became much more domestic when she had her kittens. She wanted to tuck them into bed with me and her.

I miss her still. My mother never even told me when she died!

S&P 500 +0.2%
DOW +0.3%
NASDAQ +0.4%

briefly scanning your posts below.

Not to mention that said posts exacerbate my fear of an economic collapse leading to full-blown fascism in this benighted god-ridden society.

The four most beautiful words in our common language: I told you so.


Where have we heard that before

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-best-quotes-of-gore-vidal-who-died-last-night-2012-8#ixzz22IusdrXN

Last edited Wed Aug 1, 2012, 12:31 PM - Edit history (1)

*I* made the rubber stamp.


(Tell 'em, Anne.)

... I like the Olympics now that athletes have taken over from fatcats on centre stage, but the media coverage is disproportionate, idiotic and Orwellian. Never has the BBC in particular purveyed such nationalistic opium to the people. Is it really necessary to ignore all news of the city burning for the duration?

Last weekend a small island off the coast of Schleswig-Holstein saw the American treasury secretary, Tim Geithner, and the German finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, attempt a feat as yet unknown to the Olympics. It is called "save the euro". This marathon is being played simultaneously and in real time by bankers and politicians in all Europe's capitals, while a claque shouts "two weeks to save the euro" over and over again.

I have a stack of "two weeks to save the euro" cuttings dating back to early 2010. It is a morgue of daft subjunctive journalism. Every known disaster "could" be about to happen. Germany "may decide" not to bail out Greece. Spain "may need" a bailout, or the euro "could" be heading for the rocks. According to this week's Economist, yet another Athens visit by the EU's José Manuel Barroso means a Greek exit from the euro "could occur within weeks". Of course it could, or not.

The euro has been on the brink of collapse "unless" certain measures were taken for two years. The measures were not taken, but the euro has not collapsed. It is a classic case of crying wolf. This week the head of the ECB and the leaders of Germany and Italy all asserted that they will "do everything" to save the euro, "whatever it takes". The grammar implies that this is their responsibility, thus relieving Greeks, Spaniards or Italians of any moral hazard. Everyone keeps frothing at the mouth but the euro does not change.

Something else changes. A prolonged and severe austerity is in place across Europe, intended to save the loans of banks and protect them from sovereign default. To save the eurozone, Europe must endure apparently perpetual recession, including the economic enslavement of most Mediterranean countries to what is for them an overvalued currency. Those such as Greece, Italy and Spain are being frogmarched into becoming provinces of northern Europe. They are being expected to converge into one political economy, each to compete with German productivity on equal terms. Since this will not happen in our lifetime, the reality is that they will be plunged deep into poverty, relieved by occasion and desperate bailouts from Berlin and Brussels...

/More... http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jul/31/eurozone-bankers-nero-europe-burns


... So a week ago, de Guindos met with “el todopoderoso Wolfgang Schaüble,” the almighty Schäuble, as El País calls him (including the umlaut on the wrong vowel), to work something out. It’s urgent. Spain will run out of money in October unless it can raise enough to cover the bonds that are coming due, pay for its ongoing deficit, and bail out its regions. But it doesn’t want to pay the elevated risk premium the market demands for its bonds, and it doesn’t want to ask for a bailout because it doesn’t want the Troika—the austerity jocks from the ECB, the EU, and the IMF—breathing down its neck and run the show, as they’ve done with such great success in Greece. Spain wants to keep its sovereignty and dignity. If nothing can be worked out, Spain would, according to government sources, default. That word made it into print. With immediate effect (read.... The Extortion Racket Shifts to Spain).

So the best solution on the Spanish wish list would be for the ECB or the bailout funds (the EFSF and later the ESM) to buy Spanish bonds, either in the secondary markets to force yields down, or directly, but without any bailout conditions—precisely what the German Bundesbank and the Ministry of Finance have vowed to oppose: bailouts would come with conditions, namely budget cuts and structural reforms.

Alas, as long as “el todopoderoso” Schäuble demands conditions, Spain won’t request a bailout. Not until the very last minute. A game of chicken, with default as consequence. Geithner was probably telling de Guindos to back off and request a formal bailout and get it over with as soon as possible to avoid a crisis whose effluent might drift across the Atlantic and seep into the shaky US economy. President Obama’s reelection would be at stake.

But then Deutsche Bank released its earnings. They weren’t pretty; 1,900 jobs would be cut. And ominously, the bank, which walks in lockstep with the German Ministry of Finance, had dumped 37% of the Spanish sovereign debt still remaining on its books. By the end of June, it only held €873 million, down from €1.4 billion three months earlier. A process that is likely to continue—now that default and October had appeared in the same paragraph in Spanish papers. And so the bank is walking away from Spain, in synch with el todopoderoso Schäuble’s rejection of Spain’s wish list.

Deutsche Bank isn’t the only one. Capital flight continues to set new records in Spain. According to the Bank of Spain’s just released Balance of Payments, €41.3 billion left the country in May, bringing the first five months of the year to €163 billion. Eleven consecutive months of declines! For a total of €259 billion. 21.6% of GDP. And those are the people who know best.

The coordinated confidence-inspiring words from the Eurozone’s fearless leaders about doing whatever it would take to save the euro was a sign that they were afraid of Spain. Its threat of default had been effective. The ECB caved. And in doing so, it threw down the gauntlet. Read.... War Of The Central Banks?

/... http://www.testosteronepit.com/home/2012/7/31/is-germany-preparing-for-a-spanish-default.html

... This so-called crisis is being run by and for banks. They were burned by the credit crunch, by their own reckless lending to a housing bubble and to spendthrift governments. Declaring themselves too big to fail, they demanded policies whose sole virtue was to see their loans secured, at whatever cost to the European economy. They do not want a collapse of even a part of the euro, as that would jeopardise their balance sheets.

Like established power down the ages, political leaders are imprisoned in fighting old wars with dodgy allies. European policy is still spooked by the ghost of 1970s inflation, a ghost the euro under German leadership was supposed to exorcise. As it is, politicians dare not stimulate demand, boost consumption or expand employment. They dare not inject real liquidity into the real economy. They take advice from banks, but that advice is to bail out banks, directly or indirectly. They behave as if they alone hold the golden key to Europe's recovery, but they don't.

European leaders are in thrall to the profession of high finance. They are ruling a continent now in a recession whose depth and longevity does not seem to concern them. They are devastating an entire generation of Europeans and for no good reason. People may love circuses, but soon or later they will demand bread.

/... http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jul/31/eurozone-bankers-nero-europe-burns

They are trying to save their banks, their profits, bonuses, jobs....everything BUT the Euro. And they don't give a crap for the public, either, nor individual nations.

by not paying professional fees.

364,000,000 shares traded vs. usual 100,000,000



http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000106632&play=1

Knight Capital Group is targeted as source - maybe.

I saw that last chart and thought I was having an acid flashback!!!

Oh, wait, I never dropped acid. . . . . .

I'll take two lumps.

Tomorrow should be interesting.

In a Chinese way. . . . . .

today because wow! look at what the dollar has started to do.

Dollar up, market down. O bla di.

The flight to Imaginary Safety just took off...

I find the flight to T-bills especially ludicrous--they are paying nothing, tie your money up for ages unless you're willing to pay a penalty, and Republicans are speaking openly about defaulting on the ones held by retiring Boomers who overpaid their OASDI for over 30 years. They default on one batch, they've pretty much defaulted, period, and they won't be worth the paper they're printed on.