We're under a tropical storm warning. Hello Andrea. Should be a lot of rain, but not as bad as Debbie last year.

And to make matters worse, I've been on a diet for the last month, and they're advertising tiramisu pancakes at IHOP. #&%@$#@!

The local pancake house, 3 miles away, where we know the owner, one of the cooks, and three of the waitresses, has a Boston Cream French Toast item that must be about 5,000 calories all by itself. I can proudly say that the last two times I've been there, I've had salads. They make a Mediterranean salad that remains interesting all the way to the bottom of the bowl. By which I mean, it doesn't devolve into a bowl of lettuce halfway through like some salads do.

More and more I find myself gravitating to businesses where I know somebody. It's my personal attempt at buying local.

I love local eateries when I travel...and I will be traveling this summer. You can e-mail me.

Keep safe and dry down there.

Mexico and part of Guatemala.

She wasn't more than a tropical storm in the Pacific and maybe luck will hold and she won't strengthen in the Gulf.

not missing it this time. Although it's funny since that's my wife's name!

We're heading to the Nickelodeon Suites hotel in a couple of hours...hopefully catch a break in the squall lines and hit the pool for a little bit. Otherwise, just enjoy whatever they have to offer inside!

The pool is about to overflow. Wet dogs in my bed. It's gotten worse in the last hour or so. Getting some wind now. Jim Cantore is not in town, so we'll probably live. Got a new smartphone yesterday, that they just activated about midnight, and it's quacking out weather advisories like crazy.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/06/05/imf-admits-to-under-estimating-damage-austerity-would-do-to-greece/



The International Monetary Fund admitted it had failed to realise the damage austerity would do to Greece as the Washington-based organisation catalogued mistakes made during the bailout of the stricken eurozone country.

In an assessment of the rescue conducted jointly with the European Central Bank (ECB) and the European commission, the IMF said it had been forced to override its normal rules for providing financial assistance in order to put money into Greece.

Fund officials had severe doubts about whether Greece’s debt would be sustainable even after the first bailout was provided in May 2010 and only agreed to the plan because of fears of contagion. Given the rise in unemployment to 25%, the report noted: “It is difficult to argue that adjustment should have been attempted more slowly.”

In Athens, officials reacted with barely disguised glee to the news, saying it confirmed that the price exacted for the €110bn (£93bn) emergency package was too high for a country beset by massive debts, tax evasion and a large black economy.”

But no general repudiation of Austerity has been issued, yet. Hell hasn't frozen over, although it's pretty chilly in Michigan. We haven't even hit 80 in a week or more...

My roses and peonies are blooming at the same time. Good color, but smaller than usual.

Parthenon was paid for but I would be keeping an eye on the more portable artwork.

Can these banksters get a French Revolutionary Severance Package and a public apology to the Greek people from the Germans.

The fabric of the Greek society has been ripped to shreds and bad seeds have been sown.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22796452


European authorities are to propose bringing control of the inter-bank lending rate, Libor, under the supervision of a Paris-based regulator.

The draft regulation proposes moving oversight of the scandal-hit benchmark from London to the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA).

Libor is used to price trillions of pounds worth of financial contracts, including loans and mortgages.

A Treasury source said the government was "relaxed" about the plans.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22794313


French unemployment rose to 10.8% in the first quarter of the year - its highest level since 1998, official estimates have shown.

The jobless rate grew from 10.5% in the last quarter of 2012, the official Insee statistics agency said.

The French economy went into a recession after seeing GDP fall by 0.2% in the first quarter.

President Francois Hollande has pledged to boost jobs and growth, but demand has been sapped by the eurozone crisis.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22796832

The Bank of England has kept its stimulus programme of quantitative easing (QE) unchanged and also held interest rates at 0.5%.

The decision, at the last Monetary Policy Committee meeting chaired by Sir Mervyn King, was widely expected.

Most analysts do not expect any change in policy until the new Bank governor, Mark Carney, arrives in July.

The MPC has been split in recent months over whether to increase QE from its current level of £375bn.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22793207


India is the world's biggest consumer of gold and demand for the metal has been rising further


India has increased the duty on gold imports for the second time in six months, in an attempt to rein in surging demand for the precious metal.

The finance ministry said it had raised the duty to 8% from 6%.

Gold is a preferred investment option among Indian consumers and the recent drop in its price has boosted demand.

But gold imports are also one of the biggest contributors to India's current account deficit, which has been rising, prompting concerns among policymakers.

blatant market manipulation. They can raise the duty all they want but it won't slow it down. We are at the dawn of a de facto gold standard. The tide is about to go out and some folks are going to be caught skinny dipping.

http://www.businessinsider.com/german-manufacturing-orders-2013-6

This week we actually saw some good news on the Eurozone manufacturing front.
PMI reports from across the region — especially the periphery — saw nice jumps in May from April.
Meanwhile, if there's one country that appears to be slipping, it's Germany.
Now only was unemployment higher, recently, than expected, its latest manufacturing report is brutal.

DJ FX Trader @djfxtrader

German Apr Mfg Orders Adj -2.3% MM; Unadj +5.6% YY; Forecast -0.8% On Month

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/german-manufacturing-orders-2013-6#ixzz2VR1xO9bS

http://www.businessinsider.com/why-markets-have-been-rallying-while-commodities-have-been-tanking-2013-6

For much of the early part of this century, we've been used to seeing commodity prices rally on "good" news. If the stock market were accelerating, then oil would be rising too. When markets fell, commodities would also be in decline.
That's not been the case over the last two years, as this chart from Morgan Stanley makes clear.



So what's the story?

Are commodities warning of a slowdown, or reflecting the oncoming Fed "tapering" in some way?


Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/why-markets-have-been-rallying-while-commodities-have-been-tanking-2013-6#ixzz2VR3A2TuY

These are my opinions based on what I see. First, the commodities with the exception of oil are deflating in value in lock step to the devaluation of currencies across the boards. This is the result of the central banks agreeing to devalue in a cooperative manner to counter the debt and interest payments they have taken on in support on investment markets. These are not stupid people, they are well aware of what they are doing and the consequences of not funding the system.

Second, there are currently hedge funds, both private and sovereign, buying the infrastructure of the commodity markets. This includes the land, the mineral rights, the means of production, the administrative processes, plants and facilities. At the same time they are degrading the gross worth of these markets to get pricing below nominal valuations. They did the same things to corporate infrastructure back in the 80's.

Third, do not expect a return to the gold standard. Do not expect the yuan to be a competitive currency any time soon. While China continues to amass tons of gold as have other BRIC members, the intention is to buy control of the IMF and failing that, set up their own development bank and settlement banking structure within their partnership. They are being very cautious in the under taking for obvious reasons.

Fourth, the absolute corruption of the governing class will continue to move to a fascist state to protect itself. They will claim national security prevents them from shifting funding to a non-aggressive posture. So there is no peace dividend to be had. This is unrelated to the markets, but, prospering inside such a state is not impossible, it's just not going to happen for the majority of the world's citizenry.

ymmv

as usual I apologize for grammar or spelling errors.

I have no hope, I see no future....

Well, SOMEONE'S got to say it!

The down side is you know.

Act accordingly.

We will have to politely agree to disagree.

The only reason gold prices have gone down is that ETF's of gold shares have been dumped on the market. It is physical possession of gold that is paramount.

I am not into gold to make a profit, but to preserve my wealth-what little I have. Nothing else is really holding value now. Market is over priced and ETF are not reined in so a major correction is due...AGAIN. After Cyprus...only a fool would keep the bulk of their funds in a bank-someone else can take that haircut. I try to have an assortment of eggs in my basket: indexed funds, PM, commodities like canned and dehydrated food stores. I am looking for a trustworthy bit coin broker and a people to people lending site as a profit generator. I want real estate when I can pick it up at a good price. As far as banks, no thanks. I love my credit union-it is well managed and profitable, the old fashioned way.

Exactly. Now you have a piece of the background to judge just where you might want to be.

This is why I value this thread so much. I get information here that I get no where else. It is a friendly enviroment for idea exchanges and to ask questions and get good answers.

http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2013/06/05/sec-approves-nyse-proposal-to-temporarily-restore-stock-volatility-curbs/

A handful of sudden stock drops in high-profile companies convinced regulators to restore the New York Stock Exchange ’s proprietary stock-volatility safeguards starting Thursday.

The Securities and Exchange Commission late on Tuesday gave the go-ahead for NYSE Euronext to reinstate “Liquidity Replenishment Points,” or LRPs, a system to gird against wild stock moves. The stock cushions involve slowing trade in fast-moving stocks, and had been a selling point for the exchange since 2006.

NYSE’s program was phased out in April with the implementation of new, system-wide rules to contain violent stock moves. These “limit-up/limit-down” rules are seen as an improvement to the market-wide system put in place after the 2010 “flash crash.”

But while the NYSE system covered the entire trading session, the new system excludes trades in a session’s first 15 and final 30 minutes until the next phase of its rollout takes effect in August....

OOOPS! PLUG THE LEAK...SILLY RABBITS!

http://www.alternet.org/economy/how-elite-economic-hucksters-drive-americas-biggest-fraud-epidemics?akid=10517.227380.I-3n22&rd=1&src=newsletter849757&t=2&paging=off

This article is part of an ongoing AlterNet series, "The Age of Fraud."

What do you get when you throw together economic fraudsters, plutocrats and opportunistic criminals? A financial crisis, that’s what. If you look back over the massive frauds that have swept the country in recent decades, from the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s to the 2007-'08 financial crash, this deadly combination always appears. A dangerous cycle begins when prominent economists pander to plutocrats and bought politicians, who reward them with top posts, where they promote the perverse economic policies that cause fraud epidemics. Crises develop, and millions of people are ripped off. Those who fight for truth are ignored or ruined. The criminals get wealthier, bolder and more politically powerful, and go on to hatch even more devastating cons.

The three most recent financial crises in U.S. history were driven by a special type of fraud called “control fraud” -- cases where the officers who control what look like legitimate entities use them as “weapons” to commit crimes. Each time, Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve, played a catastrophic role. First, his policies created the fraud-friendly (criminogenic) environment that produces epidemics of control fraud, then he failed to identify those epidemics and incipient crises, and finally, he failed to counter them. At the heart of Greenspan’s failure lies an ethical void in the brand of economics that has dominated American universities and policy circles for the last several decades, a brand known as “free market fundamentalism” or the “neoclassical school.” (I call it “theoclassical economics” for its quasi-religious belief system.) Mainstream economists who follow this school assert a deeply flawed and controversial concept known as the “efficient market hypothesis,” which holds that financial markets magically regulate themselves (they automatically “self-correct”) and are thus immune to fraud. When an economist starts believing in that kind of fallacy, he is bound to become blind to reality. Let’s take a look at what blinded Greenspan:

Greenspan knew that markets were “efficient” because the efficient market hypothesis is the foundational pillar underlying modern finance theory.

Markets can’t be efficient if there is control fraud, so there must not be any.

Wait, there are control frauds! Tens of thousands of them.

Then control fraud must not really be harmful, or markets would not be efficient.

Control fraud, therefore, must not be immoral. As crime boss Emilio Barzini put it in The Godfather, “It’s just business.”

As delusional and immoral as this “logic” chain is, many elite economists believe it. This warped perspective has spawned policies so perverse that they turn the world of finance into the optimal environment for criminals. The upshot is that most of our elite financial leaders and professionals have thrown integrity out the window, and we end up with recurrent, intensifying financial crises, de facto immunity for our most elite criminals, and the rise of crony capitalism. Let’s do a little time travel to see exactly how this plays out...

MORE AT LINK

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/06/05-3


Christine Lagarde, the head of the IMF, is expected at Bilderberg 2013. (Photograph: Michel Euler/AP)

The famed—and much derided—Bilderberg Group is meeting this week in Britain to discuss whatever it is the world's super elite discuss at their secretive annual gatherings.

Held this year at the five star Grove Hotel near Watford, England, the 61st Bilderberg Group meeting will host some of the world's most powerful individuals—including heads of banks, fossil fuel company CEOs, former heads of state, powerful government ministers and officials, academics, and media moguls.

Among certain notable attendees, IMF Chief Christine Lagarde is attending this year's meeting as well as US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, (Ret.) US Army General David Petraeus, former US Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, former Nixon adviser and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, and Bush-era neoconservative titan Richard Perle.

Long shrouded in secrecy, the Bilderberg Group has long been the focus of conspiracy theorists who look on the cadre of global elites as the puppet masters of the "new world order."


***i don't think they bother to get together for just tea and cakes.
no, thats something i would do.

to be a fly on the wall.

there is plenty of shyte for us all.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/05/us-sec-moneyfunds-idUSBRE9540UN20130605

A portion of the $2.6 trillion money market fund industry would be required to fundamentally change how it prices its shares under proposals issued by U.S. regulators on Wednesday to reduce the risk of abrupt withdrawals. But the Securities and Exchange Commission plan was not as strict as some market players feared and included an industry-favored provision for funds to charge withdrawal fees and delay return of funds to customers during times of financial distress.

For more than a year the SEC has been debating whether changes made in 2010 were enough to avoid a repeat of a run on money market funds seen at the height of the financial crisis. The additional reforms proposed on Wednesday did not go as far as a draft proposal floated last year by then-SEC Chair Mary Schapiro, who left in December. The fund industry had warned that further major reforms could kill investor interest in money market funds. In a compromise move, the SEC's new plan mostly focuses on prime funds for institutional investors, which are seen as more prone to runs because those investors are more sophisticated and more likely to pull large blocks of money first in a panic. The SEC estimated that institutional funds represent 37 percent of the market with $1 trillion in assets.

The SEC's plan calls for two alternative proposals that it said could be adopted alone or in combination. The first piece would require prime funds used by institutional investors to transition from a stable, $1 per share, to a floating net asset value (NAV). That reform is a direct response to what happened in 2008 when the Reserve Primary Fund, one of the largest money funds, suffered losses on Lehman Brothers debt and could not maintain its $1 per share price, known as "breaking the buck." That ignited a run by investors across the money fund industry, cutting off a major source of overnight funding for many corporations. The SEC said that retail and government funds, which are not considered to be at the same risk for runs, would not have to move to a floating NAV. Retail funds are defined as those that limit shareholder redemptions to $1 million per day. Government funds would be limited to Treasuries, but the SEC said that most funds featuring tax-exempt debt sold by state and local governments would qualify as retail funds. The industry has long fought against moving away from a stable share price, which it says is appealing to investors looking for a safe product.

The second proposal would give fund boards for institutional and retail funds the authority to impose so-called "liquidity fees and redemption gates" during times of stress. That would give funds the power to stop an outflow of investor money, an idea that the SEC's two Republican commissioners last year said they might be able to support...The five commissioners voted unanimously on Wednesday to put the plan out for 90 days of public comment.

RESISTING REFORMS

For years, proponents of further reform have raised concerns that money market funds, mutual funds that invest in short-term debt securities, can be considered as safe as bank deposits even though they do not have a government guarantee. In 2010, after the financial crisis, the SEC adopted rules that bolstered fund transparency, tightened credit quality standards, shortened the maturities of fund investments and imposed a new liquidity requirement. The SEC's roughly 700-page plan released on Wednesday comes after more than a year of infighting at the agency over whether and how to craft further rules for the industry...Sheila Bair, the former head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp, said, "I am concerned that it falls short of what is necessary to protect taxpayers, mutual fund investors, and the stability of the financial system."

MORE

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-06/births-rise-as-parents-to-be-renew-confidence-in-economy.html

An increase in the number of babies being born provides the latest sign that the U.S. economy is mending from the worst recession of the post-World War II era.

Births rose less than 1 percent to 3.96 million in 2012, the first annual increase since the number tumbled from the historic high reached just as the economic recession began in December 2007, according to provisional data released today by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

Lower birth rates have been tied to economic distress, with declines also seen during the Great Depression of the 1930s and the recession in the early 1970s. Typically in these economic situations couples put off marriage or childbearing because of losing a job or lowered income, resulting in fewer births.

“We’d expect to see a bounce once people feel more upbeat about the economy,” Mark Mather, a demographer with the Population Reference Bureau, a nonprofit research and academic organization in Washington, said in a telephone interview.

Women opt for pregnancy in downturns, figuring they might as well pursue the family goals while the economic ones are out of reach...and before they lose medical coverage.

AND it takes 9 months.

This is a lagging indicator that the economy is in the toilet. Women gave up waiting for Obama and Co. to do anything.

It takes a REAL DEPRESSION to depress birthrates for an extended period....Is this a confession that it was much worse than anyone was willing to officially admit? Where is the WPA, the infrastructure rebuilding, etc.?

5 years, eh? Did they track it against age and quantity of potential mothers? Or is this another attempt to paint over an ugly picture? After all, one can only delay childbearing for so long, before the window of fertility closes for good.

I hate articles like these. They cloud the real issues with their cheerleading.

Wait any longer to have kids?

During the Depression, the birth rate dropped steeply, and that is probably the only thing they're looking at. There was a postwar baby boom only because the age of marriage lowered right after the war and there was pent up baby demand among older mothers. Women didn't generally have more kids after the war, more women had kids at the same time.

This time, something else is going on and my guess is the same as yours, that out of work older women have decided it's now or never.

I join you in your hatred of cheerleading articles written by people who don't know what to look for.

http://www.alternet.org/world/iceland-revolution?akid=10526.227380.efIFiU&rd=1&src=newsletter850837&t=20&paging=off





We have to nationalize the banks. We have to get rid of the government. We need to have access to the internet seen as a human right. We need to have a new Constitution," said Birgitta Jonsdottir, founder of the Icelandic Pirate Party. Jonsdottir, a lifelong political activist and recently re-elected member of the Icelandic parliament was describing the four central demands of the new political revolution sweeping Iceland since the financial collapse. "We can create power and be the government and be the media. If Iceland can do it, you can do it."

The struggle in Iceland is ongoing, but the nation's people have achieved monumental results in a relatively short amount of time due to the nature of their movement building. They managed to arrest and jail the bankers who wrecked the economy. When the government privatized public banking institutions to their friends, essentially for free, and made the people pay for their bailouts, the people threw them out of office and refused to give the banks their money. And since Iceland only recently achieved independence from Denmark in 1944, their boilerplate constitution had never been updated. The movement in Iceland successfully used direct democracy to crowdsource a new constitution via Facebook and Twitter, and that crowdsourced constitution was widely supported by the people as the official model for a new constitution.

While Iceland's politicians have since ignored the will of the people, a budding new political force in Iceland is building a movement in parliament to change that. We can learn from Iceland and accomplish similar goals here.

1. Strive For Unity

2. Turn a Few Central Demands into Goals...Keep it basic.

3. Be the Banks

4. Be the Government

5. Crowdsource a New Constitution

We're on the precipice of a revolution here. Everybody is pissed. We all know what we want. We have examples all over the world of solutions to implement. All it takes is a little organizing....


DETAILS AT LINK

What's the hot burning issue, the tragic loss, the startling development, or fundamental history that we ought to focus on this weekend? List your proposals below:

i would nominate 'how to find great fitting denim' or great eye shadow if it were left to me.

When my daughter was born, spring of '76, "denim" was everywhere. I remember writing in her baby book about the fads of the time, and "denim" was far and away #1. EVERYTHING was denim. Jeans, jackets, shoes, purses, hats, furniture. There was even a denim Bible. Oh, not a book with the fundamental facts and myths about the heavy cotton fabric, but the Holy Bible(sic), covered in denim.

And maybe that's not a bad idea for a theme, Demeter. The origins of denim, of jeans as iconic Americana, bans on jeans, cuffed or not cuffed, on the ass or off, who wears jeans, Wrangler vs. Levi vs Lee, designer jeans. . . . . . . . rivets and zippers and buttons, oh my!

a quintessential American product. They still fetch a high dollar in many markets. I friend of mine would take a suit case and trade for what he needed in his travels to Europe and India. It paid for his travels in his youth.

Of course there is an ecological down side, but I use and reuse them. They are like the plains buffaloes hides, tough and long lasting.

Although, reading her post more focus than I had in mind would probably be a good thing ...

Thinking of clothing, of how it expresses power, or lack thereof, of the costs - Bangladesh, for instance ....

Demeter, what about "Weekend Economists Rend their Garments" - given that I have no hope and see no future that sounds fitting to me http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/06/04-7

Eve of Destruction (or How to Destroy a Planet Without Really Trying)
Humanity imperiled and the path to disaster
by Noam Chomsky

However, don't take me seriously - I have to work Saturday, which is also the Belmont, will be exhausted by Sunday, and so am likely to be unavailable most of weekend to make contributions.

And that jeans used to be working-class (or lower) clothing until they got gentrified.......they're kind of all those things you mentioned rolled into one, including gender relations, pop culture, globalization

Hey, Demeter! I think between X, B&R, and TG, you got yourself a WEE theme

An overdose, or reaction to the ridiculous prices during the heyday.

Also, it's not very bendy.

I have a couple pair, I think they're Wrangler but I'm not sure, that I bought at Target in late 2005, and four pair of Kirkland jeans from Costco purchased in '09, maybe '10. Since our winter only lasts a couple months, I expect those jeans to last me several more years. Those and my shorts for the summer are about the only clothing I buy ready-made.

The heavy denim jeans, and only $5.

Some of these styles nowadays are of such thin fabric, I hesitate to call them jeans.

but I love bib overalls. Nothing even comes close to them in comfort and durability. Jeans that bend. I will sometimes wear my shirts on the outside of the bib and folks don't know I am wearing them.

Not only do I have enough pockets but the bib makes a nice space for young animal (chicks, kitties, puppies, and rabbits are my favs) and fresh garden produce.

Winter coming on, a 'union suit' under those overalls can be a lifesaver.

Had a bad experience with jumpsuits, overalls go on and off in a snap-great for the middle of the night when a predator is after your livestock and you don't want to go outdoors nekkid. Slip on some mocs and you are good to go.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-06/dimon-predicts-volatility-as-global-liquidity-returns-to-normal.html

Global markets will face increased volatility as central banks bring interest rates back to normal levels, JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon said.

“We should all hope for a normalization of interest rates -- that’s a good thing,” Dimon said today during a panel discussion at the Fortune Global Forum in Chengdu, China. “As we go back to normal, its going to be scary, and its going to be kind of volatile.”

Investors have been encouraged to buy riskier assets as global central banks unleashed unprecedented monetary stimulus after the financial crisis of 2008. Concern that the policies would be reviewed grew last month following comments from Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke.

Price swings across assets and around the world are holding below historical averages. Levels of investor concern in equities, commodities, bonds and currencies, as measured by Bank of America Corp.’s Market Risk index of cross-asset volatility, are below readings from about 75 percent of days since 2000, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

the shell game would be over.

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

Source: Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration

Read More: http://www.dol.gov/opa/media/press/eta/ui/eta20131107.htm

UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE WEEKLY CLAIMS REPORT

SEASONALLY ADJUSTED DATA

In the week ending June 1, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 346,000, a decrease of 11,000 from the previous week's revised figure of 357,000. The 4-week moving average was 352,500, an increase of 4,500 from the previous week's revised average of 348,000.

The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was 2.3 percent for the week ending May 25, unchanged from the prior week's unrevised rate. The advance number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment during the week ending May 25 was 2,952,000, a decrease of 52,000 from the preceding week's revised level of 3,004,000. The 4-week moving average was 2,975,750, a decrease of 15,250 from the preceding week's revised average of 2,991,000.

UNADJUSTED DATA

The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 293,021 in the week ending June 1, a decrease of 27,102 from the previous week. There were 324,385 initial claims in the comparable week in 2012.
....

The largest increases in initial claims for the week ending May 25 were in California (+8,622), Missouri (+2,999), Kentucky (+1,750), Pennsylvania (+1,333), and Kansas (+1,325), while the largest decreases were in Michigan (-2,185), North Carolina (-1,747), South Carolina (-867), Tennessee (-686), and Texas (-608).

== == == == ==

Good morning, Freepers and DUers alike. I ask you to put aside your differences long enough to read this post. Following that, you can engage in your usual donnybrook.

It's nice to see a decrease. I have been posting the number every week for at least a year. I seriously do not care if the week's data make Obama look good. They are just numbers, and I post them without regard to the consequences. I welcome people from Free Republic to examine the numbers as well. They paid for the work just as much as members of DU did, so I invite them to come on over and have a look. "The more the merrier" is the way I look at it.

I do not work at the ETA, and I do not know anyone working in that agency. I'm sure I can safely assume that the numbers are gathered and analyzed by career civil servant economists who do their work on a nonpartisan basis. Numbers are numbers, and let the chips fall where they may. If you feel that these economists are falling down on the job, drop them a line or give them a call. They work for you, not for any politician or political party.

The word "initial" is important. The report does not count all claims, just the new ones filed this week.

Note: The seasonal adjustment factors used for the UI Weekly Claims data from 2007 forward, along with the resulting seasonally adjusted values for initial claims and continuing claims, have been revised. These revised historical values, as well as the seasonal adjustment factors that will be used through calendar year 2012, can be accessed at the bottom of the following link: http://www.oui.doleta.gov/press/2012/032912.asp

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2013/06/miracle-pizza.html



I have never thrown a dinner party without experiencing at least one moment of knee-knocking, might-as-well-blow-up-the-brisket panic. Once, when a risotto took on the consistency of nearly dry cement, I lay down on the floor and refused to get up. I’ve stormed out of the house, leaving the oven on and the burners aflame. I’ve cried to my butcher, my fish guy, and an assortment of alarmed grocery-store employees. I’ve realized at 8 P.M. that my guests would not be eating before midnight, and, on one particularly dramatic occasion, a chicken left my apartment via the window. Somehow, when friends arrive memories of these ordeals vanish; everyone drinks, laughs, and polishes off the replacement chicken, its ill-fated predecessor forgotten. Yet, when the time comes to ready the next meal, P.T.S.D. flashbacks blaze up—frozen pork chops! sunken soufflé! smoking oven!—and I set about arming myself against the next unknowable disaster.

In that spirit, before I recently began preparing a dinner from the new “Franny’s Simple Seasonal Italian Cookbook” I read the recipes all the way through, learning that I could not begin the pizza dough the day of cooking—it rises in the fridge for forty-eight hours and must be reshaped, re-cooled, then warmed up in order to take on crust-like qualities. I started shopping for ingredients at ten-thirty in the morning, giving myself time to loiter and chat up my baker, butcher, and ice-cream purveyor. I set the table around noon to head off any zero-hour revelation that I had lost all of my forks. By four, the toppings and salads were prepped, the pizza stone was heated, I’d showered, and my roommate (babysitter for the day) decided it was safe to leave me alone for long enough to go on a run.

When she returned, I was sitting at the kitchen table, waging war against the cork in a bottle of Prosecco, moaning, “Everything is ruined!” In this case, a few guests had dropped out—no big deal, six pizzas for seven people turned out to be only a little crazy—and I was quickly talked down. And yet Alice Waters’s avowal, in her glowing introduction to the husband and wife Andrew Feinberg and Francine Stephens’s book, that, “as you thumb through these pages, you start to absorb the easy grace with which meals are assembled at Franny’s,” did not seem entirely accurate.

“I believe there is no better pizza in all of New York,” Alice Waters writes of the pies at Feinberg and Stephens’s beloved (read: impossible to get a seat at) Brooklyn restaurant, which recently moved from one Flatbush Avenue location to another. (The old space will house the couple’s second eatery, Marco’s, which rumor has it will be a more of a classic Italian trattoria.) Franny’s was one of the early Brooklyn adopters of the environmentally responsible cuisine that Waters has long championed out West. And the restaurant’s popularity has persisted even as farm-to-table fare has become de rigueur across the borough, because the food is just that good. The vibe is convivial and casual—parents soothe grumpy toddlers with spoonfuls of stunning fior-di-latte gelato; more senior parents cheer as their teen-agers abstain from another slice of pizza in favor of a helping of one of Franny’s perfect, pared-down vegetable dishes (say, sugar snap peas with yogurt, scallions, and herbs). But Waters is right: Franny’s pizza that is so impeccable that even the home-cooked version—made on a pizza stone in a five-hundred-degree oven rather than in a nine-hundred-degree, wood-burning pizza oven—proved well worth the inevitable freak-out.

Not at the OP's. That much drama would curdle my stomach.

my flaming nachos and excited gingerbread men among other cooking disasters.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/johncassidy/2013/06/will-the-feds-try-to-kill-sac-capital.html

A couple of months ago, I asked if Steve Cohen, the billionaire hedge-fund manager, had bought off the U.S. government by agreeing to pay the Securities and Exchange Commission more than six hundred million dollars to settle an insider-trading case. It appears that the answer is no. With many on Wall Street waiting on tenterhooks for the dénouement of the SAC Capital story, the big question is whether Cohen will succeed in radically downsizing the firm, currently one of the world’s biggest hedge funds, on his own terms, or whether the Justice Department will issue it a death warrant.

In the next day or two, SAC is expected to announce how much money its public investors have withdrawn from the firm. With the pressure on Cohen mounting, the Blackstone Group and other big institutions have evidently decided that the safest option is to get some of their money out now. It’s looking like the best-case scenario for Cohen is that he avoids a criminal indictment, returns all of the money that SAC’s outside investors have entrusted to the firm, and is allowed to continue operating SAC as a private investment firm that manages the roughly eight billions dollars he and other insiders have built up in its various funds. The worst case is that he gets indicted on criminal charges, with the prospect of a decade or more in jail, and that SAC is forced to conduct a fire sale of its assets, which could impose big losses on the firm and conceivably force it into bankruptcy.

Another possibility, which has been raised in recent reports that appear to have resulted from deliberate leaks, is that, rather than going after Cohen personally, the government could bring racketeering charges against SAC, which would almost certainly destroy the firm. Whenever the federal government wants to put a company out of business, the racketeering code, which was originally designed to deal with the Mafia, is its nuclear option. If a financial business gets indicted on RICO charges, or even looks like it might, its lenders and investors have every reason to panic, and no financial business can survive for long without ready access to credit.

In the late nineteen-eighties, Rudy Giuliani, then the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, slapped a small firm called Princeton/Newport Partners with a RICO indictment, effectively killing it, and he threatened to bring a similar indictment against Drexel Burnham Lambert, home to Michael Milken. To head off such a disaster, in 1989 Drexel pleaded no contest to six charges of stock manipulation. Even that didn’t save the firm, though. In February, 1990, its commercial paper funding dried up, and it was forced to file for bankruptcy.