Because any nation that doesn't have strong labor laws is guilty of the same thing: treating people as disposable slave labor.

Until all governments value their citizens over any other consideration, the deaths, maimings, diseases, pollution, etc. will continue.

It starts at one company, one nation at a time...

All that health and safety stuff costs businesses a lot of money. Can't have that. Saving workers lives . . . why that could cut into profit margins.

We can boycott Bangladesh but what other countries should we avoid buying stuff from?

Maybe the easiest thing would be to stop buying stuff.

And here is a blog for some guidelines: http://makeit.do/


Use it up:
If I use something up, I can replace it. This includes food, toiletries, make-up (a product that is used regularly and gone can be replaced, a “wander around Sephora and get three new lipsticks” is not allowed).

Wear it out:
Running shoes are the only shoes that are allowed to be replaced because they’re a specific kind of shoe. In general if a casual sneaker “wears out” I need to “use up” one of my other pairs of casual sneakers. If all my underwear falls apart during the year, I suppose I can buy some more. Seems unlikely. I don’t anticipate much wearing out, at least that can’t be mended and made to do.

Make it do:
This will be my life. Mostly I expect to make do.

Do without:
I have so much, it’s hard to imagine I’ll have to do without. If I want a book, I can go to the library or borrow from a friend. I can accept gifts, though gifts can’t become a backdoor to getting tons of stuff. Maybe I can barter a piece of fabric for a skein of wool, or something along those lines.

also a few exceptions...
http://makeit.do/guidelines

Nothing but pure greed and a complete lack of respect for workers' safety.

THIS GUY STARTS OUT DESCRIBING THE SCENARIO...THEN GOES COMPLETELY OFF BASE....

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/05/opinion/sunday/douthat-what-health-insurance-doesnt-do.html?_r=0

IN one of the most famous studies of health insurance, conducted across the 1970s, thousands of participants were divided into five groups, with each receiving a different amount of insurance coverage. The study, run by the RAND Corporation, tracked the medical care each group sought out, and not surprisingly found that people with more comprehensive coverage tended to make use of it, visiting the doctor and checking into the hospital more often than people with less generous insurance. But the study also tracked the health outcomes of each group, and there the results were more surprising: With a few modest exceptions, the level of insurance had no significant effect on the participants’ actual wellness.

AND RIGHT THERE IS WHERE THE WHOLE THING FALLS APART...
MEDICINE IN THE '70'S WASN'T ANYTHING TO WRITE HOME ABOUT. THAT WAS 45 YEARS AGO---45 YEARS BEFORE MEDICINE BECAME MORE OF A SCIENCE THAN A HAND-HOLDING, BONE-SETTING, PALLIATIVE CARE SYSTEM. ACTUALLY BEING ABLE TO DETECT AND PREVENT ILLNESS BEFORE IT BECAME INCURABLE HAS CHANGED THE OUTCOMES FOR A COUPLE OF GENERATIONS NOW.

Needless to say, experts have been arguing about what the RAND results mean ever since. But the basic finding — that more expensive health insurance doesn’t necessarily lead to better health — just received a major boost. The state of Oregon expanded its Medicaid program via lottery a few years ago, and researchers released the latest data on how health outcomes for the new Medicaid users differed from those for the uninsured. The answer: They didn’t differ much. Being on Medicaid helped people avoid huge medical bills, and it reduced depression rates. But the program’s insurance guarantee seemed to have little or no impact on common medical conditions like hypertension and diabetes. ANOTHER BIG HOLE: THE PURPOSE OF MEDICINE SHOULD ALWAYS BE PREVENTION....ONCE YOU HAVE A CHRONIC DISEASE, THERE ISN'T A CURE.


As liberals have been extremely quick to point out, these findings do not necessarily make a case against the new health care law, which includes a big Medicaid expansion as well as subsidies for private insurance. After all, the first purpose of insurance is economic protection, and the Oregon data shows that expanding coverage does indeed protect people from ruinous medical expenses. The links between insurance, medicine and health may be impressively mysterious, but staving off medical bankruptcies among low-income Americans is not a small policy achievement. ANOTHER POTHOLE BIG ENOUGH TO SWALLOW A BUICK...THIS POLICY IS NOT GOING TO STOP MEDICAL BANKRUPTCIES...LOW-INCOME PEOPLE CAN'T AFFORD TO GO BANKRUPT...THEY JUST FALL OUT OF THE ECONOMY AND DIE IN THE STREETS.

This is true. But it’s also true that the health care law was sold, in part, with the promise (made by judicious wonks as well as overreaching politicians) that it would save tens of thousands of American lives each year. There was so much moral fervor on the issue, so much crusading liberal zeal, precisely because this was not supposed to be just a big redistribution program: it was supposed to be a matter of life and death. But if it turns out that health insurance is useful mostly because it averts financial catastrophe — which seems to be the consensus liberal position since the Oregon data came out — then the new health care law looks vulnerable to two interconnected critiques. AND THEN HE REALLY GOES BATSHIT CRAZY WITH HIS SPECULATIONS AND ILLOGICAL REASONING...First, if the benefit of health insurance is mostly or exclusively financial, then shouldn’t health insurance policies work more like normal insurance? Fire, flood and car insurance exist to protect people against actual disasters, after all, not to pay for ordinary repairs. If the best evidence suggests that health insurance is most helpful in protecting people’s pocketbooks from similar disasters, and that more comprehensive coverage often just pays for doctor visits that don’t improve people’s actual health, then shouldn’t we be promoting catastrophic health coverage, rather than expanding Medicaid?

Liberals don’t like catastrophic plans because, by definition, they’re stingier than the coverage many Americans now enjoy. But this is where the second critique comes in: If the marginal dollar of health care coverage doesn’t deliver better health, isn’t this a place where policy makers should be stingy, while looking for more direct ways to improve the prospects of the working poor? Some kind of expanded health security is clearly a good thing — but if we want to promote economic mobility as well, does it really make sense to pour about a trillion dollars into a health care system that everyone agrees is deeply dysfunctional, when some of that money could be returned to Americans’ paychecks instead? There are a variety of ways this could be accomplished — a bigger child tax credit for struggling families, a payroll tax cut to boost workers, an expanded earned-income tax credit to raise wages at the bottom, health savings accounts that roll over money left unspent. In each case, the goal would be to help people rise by giving them more money and more options for what to do with it, rather than just expanding 1960s-vintage programs that pay medical bills and only medical bills. It’s to the Republican Party’s great discredit that these policies and goals don’t have enough conservative champions at the moment. But it’s to liberals’ discredit that they remain wedded to the dream of a health care bureaucracy that pays and pays and pays, when in all likelihood we could be spending much less with similar results, and finding better ways to help the poor.

THERE'S SO MUCH MORE I COULD WRITE ABOUT THIS MASTERFUL PIECE OF PROPAGANDA...BUT I'LL GIVE YOU ALL A STAB AT HIM...YOU CAN BORROW MY KNIFE, EVEN!

It isn't Health Insurance that saves lives--it's health care!

And the nation-to-nation comparisons bear it out: universal single payer saves lives and money!

OR PERHAPS BETTER PHRASED--WILL ENOUGH PEOPLE REFUSE TO SIGN UP SO THAT IT DIES A QUICK DEATH?

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/05/us-usa-healthcare-enrollment-idUSBRE94403Y20130505?feedType=RSS&feedName=domesticNews&utm_source=feedly

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Healthcare reform should be the signature Democratic achievement of President Barack Obama's presidency.
NAH--I THINK THE PREDATOR DRONE CONTROVERSY IS THE SIGNATURE ACHIEVEMENT....But with "Obamacare" five months from show time, Democrats are worried about whether enough Americans will sign up to make the sweeping healthcare overhaul a success - and what failure might mean for Congress heading into the 2016 presidential race. Some of the law's main advocates fear that not enough of America's 49 million uninsured will know about health coverage offered in their own states. Even if they do, new insurance plans may not be attractive to young, healthy consumers needed to offset an expected influx of older and sicker patients. Only a handful of states are beginning campaigns to promote the online health insurance marketplaces created by the law. Known as exchanges, the markets will offer private coverage at federally subsidized rates to individuals and families with low-to-moderate incomes, with enrollment set to begin October 1.

The federal government has kept quiet about its promotion plans, which are expected to begin in earnest over the summer. While Obama and his administration say they are working nonstop on reform, analysts believe a poor performance could make the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act a big enough campaign issue in 2014 to jeopardize Democratic control of the Senate - particularly if insurance costs rise sharply. "There is reason to be very concerned about what's going to happen with young people. If their (insurance) premiums shoot up, I can tell you, that is going to wash into the United States Senate in a hurry," said Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat. Some Democrats are frustrated about the lack of details surrounding administration plans to promote the exchanges. Senator Max Baucus, a chief architect of the reform law, said federal outreach efforts deserve a failing grade so far and could be heading for a "huge train wreck." He criticized Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius for the scant information her department has provided. NOW WE KNOW WHY HE "RETIRED"

FUNDING EMBARGO

"Why in late April can't they show us any of what they've got planned? The rollout plan should already be in existence," an exasperated Democratic Senate aide said separately. The law is expected to cover 15 million Americans next year through the exchanges and an expansion of Medicaid. The overall number is forecast to jump to 38 million by 2022. Reform is facing challenges on several fronts. Big insurers appear wary of participating, raising questions about how competitive the exchanges will be. Businesses are mounting a new legal effort to stop the use of federal subsidies in exchanges run by Washington. And most states have balked at the exchanges and the Medicaid expansion. Meanwhile, the enrollment effort is under threat from months of delay, a congressional Republican embargo on new funding and worries about how affordable the new plans will be, according to analysts, lawmakers, congressional aides and former officials.

"I don't see how what they're planning to do is going to be adequate. The resources are too limited, the (law's) penalties are too weak and elite opposition in much of the country will undermine" enrollment, said Paul Starr, a Princeton professor and former health adviser to President Bill Clinton. Add to that the challenge of reaching a public that is highly skeptical and often misinformed about the most complex social legislation since Medicare and Medicaid in the mid-1960s. A Kaiser Family Foundation poll found that 77 percent of Americans know little or nothing about exchanges, while 40 percent erroneously think reforms create a government panel to make end-of-life decisions for people on Medicare. An April survey of 1,003 people by HealthPocket, an online company that helps consumers find insurance, also found that the law's penalty for not buying coverage would not induce most 25-to-34-year-olds or 18-to-24-year-olds to purchase it...The administration is building exchanges in 33 states that are unwilling or unable to do so on their own, and has limited funds for marketing. The remaining 17 states are building their own and have received sizable budgets for outreach. Among states taking the lead, Vermont has launched radio advertising to raise public awareness. Colorado begins its public outreach this month, while California, Maryland and the District of Columbia will hold off until later in the year. For the federal exchanges, HHS has a contract worth at least $8 million with public relations firm Weber Shandwick and $54 million to train and pay "navigators," or counselors who will help consumers choose a health plan. It also has a $28 million contract with General Dynamics to set up a call center and will make its Healthcare.gov website consumer-oriented. The administration is seeking help from major U.S. insurance providers to market aggressively to consumers on the federally run exchanges and help convince healthy citizens between 26 to 45 to pay for insurance instead of a first-year penalty amounting to $95 per person or 1 percent of household income.

MORE BLOVIATING AT LINK

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/16176-un-finds-little-appreciation-for-human-rights-among-us-businesses

Washington - A United Nations expert group is warning that too many gaps remain in implementing new safeguards among businesses based in the United States, both in terms of their domestic and international operations, to ensure the protection of human rights of workers and communities affected by those operations....“With a few exceptions, most companies still struggle to understand the implications of the corporate responsibility to respect human rights,” Puvan Selvanathan, the current head of the Working Group and one of the two members on the U.S. trip, said at the end of the mission “Those that do have policies in place, in turn, face the challenge of turning such policies into effective practices.”

MORE FINGER-WAGGING (DESERVED) AT LINK

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/16177-apple-dodges-enough-taxes-to-cover-much-of-the-sequester

AND THAT'S JUST ONE CORPORATION!

The scheme that Apple cooked up this week to finance a $55 billion stock buyback for its shareholders was orchestrated to avoid paying $9.2 billion in taxes, Bloomberg reported Friday.

That $9.2 billion tax bill that Apple dodged would have been enough to make unnecessary all of the major budget cuts we’ve been writing about this week as part of our “Repeal the Sequester” campaign. With $9.2 billion, the federal government could have (based on lists compiled by The Washington Post’s Wonkblog and Think Progress):

Paid for rescinding the furloughs of air traffic controllers without raiding $250 million from an airport improvement fund.

Restored Head Start funding to avoid having to kick an estimated 70,000 people out of the program this year.

Kept Meals on Wheels funding for seniors intact.

Restored National Institutes of Health funding, so that research on cancer treatments and other diseases could continue uninterrupted.

Rescinded cuts of up to 10.7 percent in unemployment checks to people who have been looking for work for more than six months without success.

Kept paying for public housing assistance and housing vouchers for people who might otherwise be homeless or in substandard living conditions.

Rescinded cuts in programs for children with special needs and learning disabilities.

Kept already stretched Occupational Safety and Health inspectors on the job, doing the 1,200 workplace inspections that are being shelved by sequestration.

Fully funded disaster relief programs, a particularly critical need now that a wildfire is currently causing serious damage in southern California.

Restored $480 million now cut from the FBI’s operations.

Kept intact the federal programs responsible for safeguarding our nuclear weapons.

Avoided cutting $770 million in various State Department health and economic aid programs, plus another $650 million in funding for diplomatic activities.

Fully funded NASA operations, which would have been a boon to central Florida and to Texas communities already hurting because of the end of the space shuttle program.

BUT WAIT! THERE'S MORE... AT LINK!

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/02/swaps-lawsuit-idUSL2N0DJ19T20130502

Depository Trust & Clearing Corp (DTCC) sued the top U.S. derivatives regulator CFTC over the way it has allowed two DTCC rivals to gather potentially lucrative swap trading data. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has given two futures exchange - CME Group Inc and IntercontinentalExchange - the nod to send client data to their own proprietary data warehouses. DTCC - a financial services group controlled by investment banks that deals in post trade transactions - operates its own data warehouse and says the CFTC decision is anti-competitive. DTCC wants clients to have the choice where their data go. "The commission failed to properly consider the anticompetitive effects of (the rules), and did not comply with the legally required administrative or cost-benefit analysis procedures," DTCC said in a statement.

Underlying the spat is a fight between Wall Street and Chicago's powerful commodity traders over who will dominate the swaps data business. Traditionally, a swap is the exchange of one security for another.

The CFTC is under siege from a rising number of lawsuits as it rushes through a flurry of new regulations mandated by the 2010 Dodd-Frank overhaul of Wall Street. Last month, data vendor Bloomberg LP filed a lawsuit against the agency to fight a new rule that would make the trading of swaps more expensive.

The CFTC, led by former Goldman Sachs banker Gary Gensler, is writing rules for the $650 trillion swaps market, which critics say contributed to the 2007-09 credit meltdown by hiding huge risks from regulators. Under the new rules, swaps will need to be traded through clearing houses, which stand between buyers and sellers to absorb risk and make trading safer. Positions also will need to be reported by these clearing houses to so-called Swap Data Repositories (SDR), to give regulators more insight into the market. DTCC, ICE and CME each operate an SDR. But while the CME and ICE operate their own clearing services, DTCC has to rely instead on LCH.Clearnet, which is being bought by the London Stock Exchange, to receive sufficient data in its SDR. DTCC dominates the interest rate swaps segment because of its close ties to investment banks, while ICE is by far the biggest clearer of credit-default swaps. The CME has no such dominant position but hopes to build up substantial market share in new areas.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/06/opinion/a-disappointing-debut-at-the-sec.html

...Last week, in her first commission vote, Ms. White led the commissioners in approving a proposal that, if finalized, could leave investors and taxpayers exposed to the ravages of reckless bank trading. At issue is the regulation of the multitrillion-dollar market in derivatives. When speculative derivative bets go right, the results are lavish bank profits and huge banker paydays. When they go wrong, the results are shareholder losses and taxpayer-provided bailouts. Even when derivatives are used in a relatively prudent manner — say, to hedge against price swings in food or fuel — the largely deregulated and opaque way they are traded allows the big banks that dominate the market to charge more than they could if trading were more transparent, enriching bankers at the expense of businesses and consumers.

The S.E.C. proposal would let the foreign branches of American banks avoid rules being developed under the Dodd-Frank financial reform law and instead follow rules that prevail in the foreign countries where the deals are done. Foreign banks involved in derivative deals with American companies also could adhere to their own country’s rules as long as those rules are deemed broadly comparable to Dodd-Frank rules. The banks lobbying for this approach say they want to avoid duplicative regulation and preserve competition. In fact, it would enable them to avoid regulation and preserve bank profits. The proposal implies that foreign regulation will be adequate, but the rules elsewhere are weak or nonexistent. It is no coincidence that major derivative failures have been linked to trading from abroad, including the meltdown in the financial crisis, the failure of the hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management in 1998 and, most recently, JPMorgan Chase’s London Whale fiasco.

To make matters worse, the S.E.C. proposal is weaker than the sound guidelines from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which oversees a larger swath of the derivatives market than the S.E.C. does. Disagreement among regulators now gives the banks and their Congressional allies in both parties renewed opportunity to shape final rules to their liking...

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/02/us-japan-economy-boj-idUSBRE94103H20130502

Japan's monetary base soared to a record in April, the Bank of Japan said on Thursday, as the central bank's more aggressive quantitative easing program boosts the amount of money flowing through the economy. The BOJ unveiled a radical overhaul of monetary policy on April 4 by shifting its policy target to the monetary base from short-term interest rates. The central bank aims to roughly double the monetary base over two years by increasing purchases of government debt to end 15 years of nagging deflation. The monetary base is currency in circulation and commercial banks' deposits at the BOJ.

In April, the average monetary base was a record 149.6 trillion yen ($1.54 trillion), up 23.1 percent from the same period a year earlier, the BOJ said in a statement. At the end of April, the monetary base stood at 155.3 trillion yen, which was also a record high, central bank data showed. Under its new quantitative and qualitative monetary easing, the BOJ expects the monetary base to reach 200 trillion yen at the end of this year and then rise to 270 trillion yen at the end of 2014. ($1 = 97.3450 Japanese yen)

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/02/highfrequency-microwave-idUSL6N0DI1LL20130502

Laser beams and microwave dishes are the latest weapons in an arms race to shave milliseconds off dealing times in the shadowy world of high-speed, computerised financial trading. Traders, who make money by exploiting tiny, lightning-fast price changes on exchanges, are now targeting Europe and Asia after skirmishing in the United States.

The first microwave connections between London and Frankfurt have been launched, cutting the time to send a trade by about 40 percent compared with optic fibre cables. Behind the scenes, rivals are also racing to trim thousandths of seconds from routes to Moscow, Hong Kong and Tokyo, while also scrambling to find new technologies, including the use of drones as platforms for wireless links.

The race to transmit at nearly the speed of light comes as regulators in Europe and the United States debate cracking down on a sector accused of increasing market volatility and multiplying the risk of a market meltdown. Investors have blamed high-speed traders for exaggerating market movements -- including the biggest-ever daily plunge in gold last month -- while ethical issues have been raised at a time when the reputation of the financial sector as a whole is under scrutiny as a result of scandals such as banks rigging the Libor interest rate benchmark. But such questions are not dampening fierce competition among traders and their communications providers to squeeze out more speed.

A laser beam technology developed for the U.S. military for communication between fighter jets is to be used over the route between Britain and Germany in coming months.

"There is more money being poured into this wireless space than any time in its history," said Mike Persico, chief executive of Anova Technologies, which is building a communications network with wireless dishes and laser beams.

"A lot of things are science fiction, but I like to say we operate in the world of science fact-ion."

.......................................................


In Europe, high speed trading accounted for 6.7 trillion euros of equities trading volumes last year, 39 percent of the total, analyst Rebecca Healey at consultancy Tabb Group said. Profits in the U.S. HFT sector slid by 56 percent last year to $1.8 billion, she added. High-speed trading has been blamed for causing violent lurches on financial markets, such the U.S. "flash crash" in May 2010 when the stock market plummeted more than 1,000 points, or nearly 10 percent, in a matter of minutes. The top U.S. derivatives regulator said on Tuesday the need to look at regulating automated trading was underscored by a phoney tweet from the Associated Press' hacked Twitter account, which sparked a short-lived panic in the U.S. stock market last month. Germany is expected to bring in tougher rules governing high frequency trading later this year...Asked what might come next, Persico mentioned the use of drones and barges to create a transatlantic wireless network.

MUCH GEEKY JOY

http://euobserver.com/foreign/120005

Plans to launch an independent European credit agency have fallen apart after it failed to generate enough interest in the business world. After three years of efforts, its co-founder renounced the plans in an interview with the German daily Handelsblatt on Tuesday (30 April).

“There were not enough investors,” Markus Krull, a former senior partner in the German-based consultancy firm Roland Berger, told the daily in an interview. Berger, as a partner, planned to help launch the enterprise by seeking out 30 investors to create a foundation with some €300 million in start-up capital. Krull envisioned an agency that would compete with the US-based equivalent Standard & Poor’s, Moody’s and Fitch.

All three US-based agencies work on a for-profit basis that Krull wanted to challenge with an agency based on a foundation model...The US-based agencies dominate 95 percent of the market. All three have come under considerable criticism for how they have rated a number of sovereign states since the start of the financial crisis in 2008. Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s settled lawsuits with Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank and King County, Washington, over the weekend and agreed to pay out claims that they defrauded investors just before the US housing crisis, reports the Financial Times. Standard & Poor’s says the settlement is not an admission of guilt. The US justice department is also suing Standard & Poor’s for $5 billion for allegedly handing out top credit ratings on subprime mortgage vehicles for large fees despite knowing their inherit dangers...MORE

Have a good Monday, everyone!

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_GERMANY_EURO?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2013-05-06-05-47-16

BERLIN (AP) -- The leftwing opposition politician who was Germany's finance minister when the euro was adopted says it's time to think about abandoning the common currency in the wake of the enormous economic problems in southern Europe.

Oskar Lafontaine says on his website that struggling eurozone countries have not been able to devalue their currencies to help them cope with the economic crisis that has seen several slip into recession.

Lafontaine proposes a restructuring of Europe's banking system, stricter controls on lenders, and a return to the European monetary system that preceded the euro.

Lafontaine is now out of federal politics but is still an influential member of the Left Party, the successor to former East German communists.

http://www.businessinsider.com/german-finance-minister-who-launched-the-euro-now-says-catastrophic-currency-must-be-broken-up-2013-5

Oskar Lafontaine, the German finance minister who launched the euro, has called for a break-up of the single currency to let southern Europe recover, warning that the current course is "leading to disaster".

"The economic situation is worsening from month to month, and unemployment has reached a level that puts democratic structures ever more in doubt," he said.

"The Germans have not yet realised that southern Europe, including France, will be forced by their current misery to fight back against German hegemony sooner or later," he said, blaming much of the crisis on Germany's wage squeeze to gain export share.

Mr Lafontaine said on the parliamentary website of Germany's Left Party that Chancellor Angela Merkel will "awake from her self-righteous slumber" once the countries in trouble unite to force a change in crisis policy at Germany's expense.


Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/german-finance-minister-who-launched-the-euro-now-says-catastrophic-currency-must-be-broken-up-2013-5#ixzz2SVqFLphy

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/04/23/germany-merkel-austerity-idUSL6N0DA32N20130423

BERLIN, April 23 (Reuters) - Angela Merkel tried to contain her irritation when asked at a podium discussion in Berlin this week whether southern European countries could take much more German-ordered austerity.

But the frustration in her voice was clear enough after a week in which several European allies broke ranks, and in a public challenge to Germany, effectively declared the era of deficit reduction in Europe to be over.

"I call it balancing the budget," the German chancellor told her audience at a book presentation. "Everyone else is using this term austerity. That makes it sound like something truly evil."

EVIL IS AS EVIL DOES, ANGELA

Merkel Allies Slam Barroso Comments on Easing Euro Austerity

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-23/merkel-allies-slam-barroso-comments-on-easing-euro-austerity.html

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s allies in the German parliament condemned European Commission President Jose Barroso after he said austerity had reached its limits and should be eased to make way for growth.

Norbert Barthle, the budget spokesman for Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union in the lower house, or Bundestag, said Barroso’s comments made in Brussels yesterday had “upset me greatly.”

“A departure from a strict course of budget consolidation in Europe would be a fatal signal,” Barthle said today in an e- mailed statement. Such a shift would show “that we aren’t really serious about reforming our countries,” he said...

DEPENDS ON WHAT YOUR DEFINITION OF "REFORM" IS

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/apr/22/eu-near-austerity-limit-barroso

The European Union's focus on austerity has hit the limits of public acceptance, according to the head of the EU's executive arm, as Brussels joined the International Monetary Fund in raising concerns over the impact of public spending cuts.

José Manuel Barroso, president of the European commission, also signalled that governments would be given more leeway if they were struggling to get their budget deficits within the required ceiling of 3% of GDP.

He said the argument raging over the merits of austerity versus more public spending was a false debate – the answer was to combine the two, although public spending cuts alone would not provide the solution.

"Socially and politically, one policy that is only seen as austerity is, of course, not sustainable," Barroso said. "We haven't done everything right … The policy has reached its limits because it has to have a minimum of political and social support."

A SANE MAN!

"If the European summit in June... results in a bureaucratic, routine, formal conclusion, with a great abstract plan that needs two years to be implemented...we risk creating a climate in Europe in which the winning parties will be anti-European," Letta said.

In a joint press conference with Spain's Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy in Madrid, Letta urged the EU to take fast action to address high youth unemployment and to speed up the implementation of the euro zone banking union.

/... http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/05/06/uk-spain-italy-letta-idUKBRE9450PQ20130506

I suspect that people are nervous that Israel is going to set the Middle East aflame with their attacks on Syria.

Of course, Israel can do anything it wants to, and the West will say nothing.

That's the price of cupidity, stupidity and supporting a bad ally.

http://www.businessinsider.com/austerity-implosion-2013-5



Here's a great paragraph from Paul Krugman:

Expansionary austerity has been refuted and even the IMF says that short-run multipliers are big. The 90 percent red line on debt was an artifact of fuzzy math. The bond vigilantes remain invisible, and the confidence fairy refuses to make an appearance. Clearly, austerian economics has imploded (and some prominent austerians seem to be personally imploding too).

In just the last few weeks we've seen the UK get rebuked, Reinhart & Rogoff go down, European interest rates fall, and Niall Ferguson making him self look like a fool equating Keynes's economic philosophy with being gay (he since apologized).

What's remarkable is how public this all has been. Academic ideas go in and out all of the time, but not in ways so easily digestible for mass consumption. And usually the pace of intellectual change is glacial. This has happened in blog time.



***i'll have to see the cold, dead body before i believe it -- still it's nice to think about.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/austerity-implosion-2013-5#ixzz2SVr3qlWh

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22424568

Italy's economy will shrink by 1.4% this year, a much sharper contraction than previously forecast, according to the national statistic agency.

Istat forecast that Italy will post 0.7% growth in 2014, but added that unemployment will reach a record high of 12.3% next year.

Istat predicted in November that the eurozone's third largest economy would shrink by just 0.5% this year.

The data underlines growing fears about the strength of eurozone economies.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/trustee-for-collapsed-mf-global-sues-former-ceo-corzine-alleging-he-breached-fiduciary-duty/2013/04/23/c8caaafe-ac19-11e2-9493-2ff3bf26c4b4_story.html

The trustee in the MF Global Holdings bankruptcy case has sued ex-CEO Jon Corzine and other former executives, alleging that they pushed the company into risky practices that ultimately led to its collapse.

The lawsuit, filed Monday APRIL 22 in bankruptcy court in New York, says Corzine and two other top executives “dramatically changed” the company’s business plan after he became CEO in 2010. They then failed to update controls and other systems that were already weak, the lawsuit says. Corzine pushed the company into making big bets on bonds issued by European countries, the lawsuit says, a move that proved disastrous during the implosion of the debt crisis the following summer. MF Global collapsed in October 2011.

Tuesday, a spokesman for Corzine called the lawsuit “a clear case of Monday morning quarterbacking.” The spokesman, Steven Goldberg, said the lawsuit intentionally ignored the fact that some of MF Global’s trading partners failed and didn’t pay what they owed to MF Global.

According to the lawsuit, however, the company’s controls were so poor that it couldn’t determine its liquidity levels in real time. It portrays Corzine and others as aware of the risks but purposefully ignoring them. Corzine, who stepped down as MF Global CEO soon after the collapse, is the former co-chairman of Goldman Sachs, a former Democratic U.S. senator and the former governor of New Jersey...

SOUNDS LIKE A TOUGH CASE TO PROSECUTE

http://www.cnbc.com/id/100676783

Bankers who behave recklessly would be jailed under a new law being considered by MPs and peers on the banking commission, whose final report is due next month.

Several members of the commission, which was set up by George Osborne after the scandal over the London Interbank Offered Rate, argue for a new law which would hold bankers personally liable for catastrophic losses.

One member told the Financial Times: "Banks benefit from a public subsidy, in that they know they will be bailed out if they fail. I think we want to see a sense of personal responsibility to match that."

Andrew Tyrie, the Conservative MP chairing the commission, is close to completing a draft report with the final version due at the end of May.

Mr Osborne set up the commission to look into all aspects of bankers' behaviour, under heavy pressure from Labour, and will find it difficult to reject its recommendations. ...

WELL, WE WILL FIND OUT, SOON

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/04/29/kodak-strikes-new-deal-for-imaging-units-to-win-exit-from-bankruptcy/



Kodak said on Monday APRIL 29 that it would spin off its document and personal imaging units to its British pension plan for $650 million in cash and noncash considerations, a move that paves the way for Kodak’s exit from bankruptcy protection. Kodak had been seeking to sell off the two imaging operations. Two weeks BEFORE, Eastman Kodak announced a plan to sell its document imaging business to Brother of Japan for $210 million, with the provision that it could revisit the deal if it could sell both units together.

Now the bankrupt film pioneer has struck an even more advantageous deal after a protracted sales process. More important, the pension plan will settle its bankruptcy claim of $2.8 billion, paving the way for the company to emerge from Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the United States. On Tuesday, Kodak plans to file a draft plan to emerge from bankruptcy.

“In one comprehensive transaction, Kodak will realize its previously announced intention to divest its personalized imaging and document imaging businesses and settle its largest legacy liability,” Antonio M. Perez, Kodak’s chairman and chief executive, said in a statement.

The company had filed for bankruptcy protection in January 2012 and has been selling off various assets since then. In December, Kodak reached an agreement to sell 1,100 digital imaging patents to a consortium of technology companies for $525 million, far less than expected. But as part of that sale, Kodak retained a license to use the digital imaging portfolio patents in its future businesses, and for those businesses that it is selling.

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2013-05-05/bond-buyers-see-no-1994-rout-as-bernanke-clarity-tops-greenspan

Bond investors are gaining confidence that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke will unwind the central bank’s unprecedented $3.3 trillion balance sheet without sparking a crash similar to 1994, when Alan Greenspan surprised the market by doubling benchmark lending rates in 12 months.

Though sovereign debt levels have more than quadrupled to $23 trillion, yields for 10-year Treasuries are 5 percentage points lower than they were in 1994 and forward measures show the current 1.74 percent level rising only to 2.04 percent in a year. Policy makers’ forecasts of no rise in the target interest rate for overnight loans between banks until 2015 are damping yields in a market dominated by the Fed’s $1.84 trillion, or 15.4 percent of the $11.94 trillion in marketable U.S. debt.

While BlackRock Inc. is trimming investments in longer-term Treasuries to protect against a rise in yields and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. invokes the memory of 1994, when U.S. bonds lost 3.35 percent as then-Fed chairman Greenspan didn’t prepare investors for the speed of rate increases, money managers from JP Morgan Asset Management Inc. to Fidelity Investments say this time will be different, in part because of Bernanke’s clearer and frequent statements on what would cause central bank policy to change.

“The Fed has been very transparent and their transparency should help offset the risks that were experienced in 1994,” Edward Fitzpatrick, money manager and head of U.S. rates at the JPMorgan unit in New York, which oversees $1.5 trillion, said in a telephone interview April 30...

WHATEVER

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/04/berkshire-agm-idUSL2N0DL0EG20130504

Warren Buffett on Saturday gave the most extensive comments to date about the future of Berkshire Hathaway Inc after he is gone, saying he still expects the conglomerate to be a partner of choice for distressed companies.

Buffett, 82, also defended his plan to install his son, Howard, who has little investing experience, as nonexecutive chairman, saying the younger man's role would be to ensure that Berkshire had the right CEO in place.

During the financial crisis and its immediate aftermath, Berkshire helped prop up a number of companies, among them blue-chips such as General Electric and Goldman Sachs . Buffett's investments were viewed by many shareholders as a seal of approval from one of the world's most respected businessmen.

Short-seller Doug Kass, invited by Buffett to Berkshire's annual meeting on Saturday to offer contrarian points of view, asked whether a successor would have the same heft. Buffett said it would not matter.

"Berkshire is the 800 number when there is really some panic in the markets, and people really need significant capital," Buffett said.

"If you come to a day when the Dow has fallen 1,000 points a day for a few days and the tide has gone out and you find some naked swimmers, those naked swimmers ... will call Berkshire," he added.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-05/syria-says-israelis-jets-strike-sending-fireball-over-damascus.html

Syria threatened retaliation against Israel after an aerial strike on the outskirts of Damascus caused explosions that rocked the capital, increasing the risk of a wider regional conflict.

Israel didn’t confirm involvement in the assault yesterday. Its military also carried out an airstrike in Syria on May 3, the Associated Press reported, citing unidentified Israeli officials who said the attack targeted a shipment of missiles thought to be bound for Hezbollah militants in Lebanon.

Syria’s Deputy Foreign Minister Fayssal Mekdad told CNN the airstrikes were a “declaration of war” and that the government would retaliate in its own time. Information Minister Omran al- Zoubi said on state TV that Syria would use “any means” to protect its people. He said the overnight strike hit a military research center in Jamraya, northwest of Damascus. Syria deployed rocket batteries directed toward Israel, the pro- government Damas Post website said.

Israeli officials say Syria’s two-year-old civil war has increased the threat that Hezbollah or other militant groups will obtain weapons from the country and turn them on Israel. The Jewish state has repeatedly clashed with Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed organization classified as terrorist by Israel and the U.S., though there has been little conflict between them since Israel’s most recent invasion of Lebanon in 2006.

...Tehran, which has long backed Assad, whose Alawite minority has religious ties to Shi'ite Islam, denied Israel's attack was on arms. Shi'ite Hezbollah did not comment.

China, hosting Netanyahu, urged restraint and the respect of sovereignty, without mentioning Israel by name. Moscow and Beijing, allies of Assad, have blocked Western-backed measures against Assad at the United Nations Security Council.

A U.S. official said U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry was due to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday to see if he could persuade Moscow to support U.S. peace efforts.

Following the air strikes, the United Nations said Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called on all sides "to act with a sense of responsibility to prevent an escalation of what is already a devastating and highly dangerous conflict".

The military in Turkey, one of Assad's most vocal critics and home to more than 400,000 refugees from the civil war that grew out of protests against his rule, launched a 10-day military exercise on Monday at a base near the border.

/... http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/05/06/uk-syria-crisis-israel-idUKBRE94505920130506

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/04/22/us-sandp-fraud-lawsuit-idUSBRE93L12I20130422

Standard & Poor's asked a federal judge on Monday APRIL 22 to dismiss a U.S. Justice Department civil suit against the rating agency, arguing the government's case is based on vague statements that cannot be used to prove fraud. In a $5 billion suit, the U.S. government accused the rating agency of issuing inflated ratings on faulty products to drum up business before the financial crisis, despite company statements that its ratings were objective. S&P has vociferously defended itself in public since the case was filed in February in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, denouncing the lawsuit as meritless and accusing the government of cherry-picking emails to misconstrue what its analysts did. The rating agency has also moved to consolidate in federal court a series of parallel lawsuits more than a dozen states have filed against it.

In the Monday filing, S&P said the government cannot prove the company engaged in fraud, adding that the banks that packaged the structured finance deals themselves are ill-suited to being portrayed as victims of too-lax ratings. "From start to finish, the Complaint overreaches in targeting S&P, a rating agency that did not create, issue, sell or receive any interest in any security at issue in the case," lawyers for the ratings firm, which is owned by McGraw-Hill Companies Inc (MHP.N), said in the filing. While statements about the company's independence could be considered corporate "puffery" and its ratings were not particularly prescient, none of that proves fraud, the company said.

The 2007-2009 financial crisis was due in large part to massive losses triggered by risky mortgage loans packaged and sold to investors, often with top ratings from credit raters. But the raters have escaped most liability for their ratings from that time, since courts have largely protected them as opinions under free speech laws. The lawsuit, one of the most ambitious the government has filed in response to the financial crisis, says the rating agency engaged in a scheme to defraud investors, financial institutions and others telling them that its ratings were "objective, independent, uninfluenced by any conflicts of interest that might compromise S&P's analytic judgment."

................

The suit was filed under the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery, and Enforcement Act, a law that covers fraud affecting federally insured financial institutions.

"It is more than ironic that two of the supposed 'victims', Citibank and Bank of America — investors allegedly misled into buying securities by S&P‘s fraudulent ratings — were the same huge financial institutions that were creating and selling the very CDOs (collateralized debt obligations) at issue," S&P said in its filing.

"In other words, the Complaint charges S&P with intending to defraud these financial institutions about the likely performance of their own products."

S&P's motion also recasts the internal emails and messages the government relied on heavily in its original 119-page filing. While the government says those messages, which include one analyst performing a pop song parody about the housing market burning down, paint a picture of a company knowingly slapping inflated ratings on structured finance products, the company's filing says otherwise. Those messages, instead, the company said, show internal squabbling or even "robust internal debate."

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/05/05-1


Demonstrators numbering in the many tens of thousands call for an "insurgency" to "put an end to the policies of austerity." (Photo: AFP)


Though always estimated by true progressives in France as more of a centrist, the presidential victory of Francois Hollande one year ago was largely celebrated as victory for the nation's Left movement.

Hollande's defeat of Nicholas Sarkozy was seen as a hopeful sign in the fight against rightwing policies, the dominance of austerity and the nation's economic elite.

But one year later, nearly 200,000 demonstrators took to the streets of Paris on Sunday to berate Hollande for his betrayal of the people.

The Associated Press reports:

Tens of thousands of supporters of leftist parties are marching through central Paris to express disappointment with President Francois Hollande's first year in power, criticizing the leader for reneging on his promises to rein in the world of finance and enact economic stimulus.

http://www.alternet.org/economy/5-ways-raw-unregulated-capitalism-acting-cancer-american-society?akid=10400.227380.kgMUVc&rd=1&src=newsletter835498&t=4&paging=off

1. Attacking the Hungry

2. Suffocating the Students

3. Weakening the Children (illness)

4. Depleting the Taxpayers (by exempting the wealthy from tax)

5 .Paralyzing the Voters (aka corruption in government)



NOTICE HOW THIS PARALLELS THE GOP PLATFORM? DOES ANYONE SEE AN OPPOSITION IN THIS NATION?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/sen-max-baucus-moves-to-reshape-tax-code/2013/04/08/e7f3435a-9dff-11e2-9a79-eb5280c81c63_story_1.html

...Meanwhile, Baucus is insisting on overhauling the individual tax code as well as the corporate code, a position in line with the GOP but at odds with many Democrats. The Obama administration has promoted corporate reform, but has been indifferent to far-reaching changes to the individual tax code....


BAUCUS ANNOUNCES RETIREMENT APRIL 29TH....

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

no meetings, good weather, and I'm NOT Volunteering!

(we'll see how long that lasts)

http://elpais.com/elpais/2013/05/05/inenglish/1367779564_673122.html

The Socialist Party (PSOE) on Sunday unveiled a plan to reanimate the ailing Spanish economy in order to stem rising unemployment, prevent fresh rounds of layoffs and to alleviate the effect of the recession on families.

Opposition leader Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba presented his proposals after a meeting with party chiefs in Madrid. The text calls for the state to award credits from now until 2015 to companies that do not sack workers and the creation of a national fund worth 10 billion euros that out-of-work families in danger of eviction can tap to meet their debts with the banks.

The PSOE believes that the unemployment rate of 27 percent — some 6.2 million people — is evidence that the government’s austerity measures have failed and that credit flows to the private sector needs to be encouraged. The main opposition party also wants a debt-restructuring plan for families unable to meet their mortgage payments, with “the eventual losses to be met equally by the state and the lender that sold the mortgage.” The 10-billion fund would be open to families who find themselves in dire straits “for unexpected reasons” such as unemployment.

The PSOE said that the funds could be tapped from the “credit line open with the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), which still has 60 billion euros available” after Spain’s banking sector bailout. Rubalcaba also suggested drawing a 20-billion-euro fund from the ESM to finance companies, encourage self-employment and to give Spanish companies a nudge into global markets.

http://www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/world/eurozone-growth-slump-drags-on-1.1384037

The eurozone’s business downturn dragged on in April, suggesting the region may be falling deeper into recession this quarter, business surveys showed today.

Business expansion also flagged in China where growth was at its weakest since August 2011

Today’s European purchasing managers indexes (PMIs) suggested the euro zone is on course for a worse downturn in the current quarter, with Germany now suffering a contraction in business activity that has long dogged France, Italy and Spain.

Markit’s Eurozone Composite PMI, which gauges activity across thousands of companies and is seen as a good gauge of economic conditions, edged up in April to 46.9 from 46.5 in March, marking an improvement on an initial reading of 46.5.