Guess who?

By the cartoon, looks like Freeperville...

That SMW is going to need a substitute teacher for a week.

But, have sister and nephew in from Vegas, and Dear Ole Pappy in from SC for the week.

Last edited Thu Jul 18, 2013, 09:54 AM - Edit history (1)

a prospective candidate on the line right now!

I'll keep you all in suspense until we've worked out the details. . . . . 'cause I'm cruel that way.

But I still haven't figured out why my Windows XE slowed way down months ago. Took out something in my spyware program after checking online that helped a tiny bit and my brother was here and told me to ditch dca...exe the last time he tried to use my computer cause it was part of the problem but I have to reboot at least three times to read through DU.

This weekend I turned the sound back on to watch a Utube video and I had 14 things playing all at once if I opened up either Facebook or DU Latest Page. My brother says that isn't possible with XP.

My grandkids are just a bit too little yet to help me yet. LOL.

some web-based mail, favorite programs, pics, whatever, and just re-install it. The worst thing is if you don't have a backup of what you don't want to lose, because you will lose anything you don't have a copy of. That said, when your hard drive crashes one day you will lose anything that isn't backed up, so you would be ahead of the game to make a backup now.

Once it is installed you add an anti-virus program (the free one from Microsoft works fine for most people) and an ad-killer on it, update it from the Windows Update site, and you will be back in business.

It's comparatively easy, probably won't take more than a half a pot of coffee. The thing that takes the longest is letting the software load from the DVD or the recovery version on your computer's hard drive. And once you have done it a time or two you will find that it is really much quicker than fixing problems probably caused by a program you have no good way to track down, trying to find something that changed. You could try removing and re-installing your Internet browser (Explorer? Firefox? Another?) and re-install it, but you are just shooting in the dark, and might still be left with a re-install.

It's not the only way, but you could spend a long time trying to troubleshoot whatever got screwed up, far less time just re-installing.

btw, I have worked with users that had 30 or 40 open windows on XP that they didn't mean to have open, (I think my mother-in-law held the record of the ones I have seen) so what you are describing is not that far out of the realm of possibility.

If you are still anxious about doing it, or think it is beyond your capabilities, you might check with your local library and see if the person who teaches computer classes, or maybe someone in a computer class at the local junior college would help for a plate of cookies.

Anyway, just my .00002 cents worth...

And don't forget about the backup, because a re-install will take you back to square #1, and all that stuff that was there will be gone.

you just click through.

Many of the reasons for things can be found, but it takes time, and most folks just want it to work, rather than paying for the time it takes to find it. So on a corporate network I usually just keep images around and they can be up and running fairly quickly.

A. It's beyond my skills
B. I am so busy right now that some days I can't even get back after AM to scan through subject lines

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-23355030


A security cordon has been thrown around the Greek capital for a visit by the German finance minister, a leading proponent of austerity.

Wolfgang Schaeuble arrived hours after a bill scraped through parliament that will see thousands of public sector workers lose their jobs.

The bill is tied to new bailout loans worth 6.8bn euros (£5.8bn), needed to keep the Greek government afloat.

In central Athens, protests have been banned and metro stations closed.

the Germans are crazy.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-23352684


The parliament in Greece has narrowly approved a public sector reform bill that will see thousands of people lose their jobs.

In a 153-140 vote, MPs backed the bill tied to the country's fresh 6.8bn euros (£5.8bn) of bailout loans, needed to keep Greece afloat.

During the debate thousands of protesters rallied outside the parliament in the capital Athens.

Greece has recently been hit by a series of strikes against the cuts.

Last edited Thu Jul 18, 2013, 10:48 AM - Edit history (1)

Source: Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration

Read More: http://www.dol.gov/opa/media/press/eta/ui/eta20131357.htm

UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE WEEKLY CLAIMS REPORT

SEASONALLY ADJUSTED DATA

In the week ending July 13, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 334,000, a decrease of 24,000 from the previous week's revised figure of 358,000. The 4-week moving average was 346,000, a decrease of 5,250 from the previous week's revised average of 351,250.

The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was 2.4 percent for the week ending July 6, an increase of 0.1 percentage point from the prior week's unrevised rate. The advance number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment during the week ending July 6 was 3,114,000, an increase of 91,000 from the preceding week's revised level of 3,023,000. The 4-week moving average was 3,019,250, an increase of 37,000 from the preceding week's revised average of 2,982,250.

UNADJUSTED DATA

The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 408,710 in the week ending July 13, an increase of 25,350 from the previous week. There were 455,260 initial claims in the comparable week in 2012.
....

The largest decreases in initial claims for the week ending July 6 were in New Jersey (-4,370), California (-4,265), Texas (-3,133), North Carolina (-2,236), and Washington (-1,253), while the largest increases were in Michigan (+17,700), New York (+15,163), Pennsylvania (+4,831), Kentucky (+4,386), and Ohio (+3,771).

== == == ==

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.

24,000 is a big 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

== == == ==

Edited to note that there was a decrease this week, not an increase. I've had three cups of coffee already this morning, so I have no excuse.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-07-18/morgan-stanley-tops-analysts-estimates-on-trading-revenue-jump.html

Morgan Stanley (MS), owner of the world’s largest brokerage, reported a 66 percent earnings increase that beat analysts’ estimates as stock-trading revenue jumped and wealth-management profit margins climbed to a record.

Second-quarter net income rose to $980 million, or 41 cents a share, from $591 million, or 29 cents, a year earlier, the New York-based company said today in a statement. Excluding accounting gains tied to the firm’s own debt and a charge related to the purchase of the remaining stake in its brokerage joint venture, profit was 45 cents a share, topping the 43-cent average estimate of 26 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.

Chief Executive Officer James Gorman, 55, last month completed the purchase of a brokerage that had been a joint venture with Citigroup Inc., capping a four-year effort to more than double the size of his bank’s wealth-management division. Gorman also boosted targets for that unit’s margins and set a goal for next year’s profitability as he seeks to show progress in improving returns to fuel the stock’s 39 percent jump this year to 97 percent of tangible book value.

“Investors are interested in how they can build out the wealth-management unit now that the integration is over, and they’re hitting higher profitability targets,” said Shannon Stemm, an analyst with Edward Jones & Co. in St. Louis. “Investors are willing to pay tangible book, but to pay more than that, I think we need to see more fundamental improvement.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-07-17/is-economics-a-science-or-a-religion-.html

Is economics a science or a religion? Its practitioners like to think of it as akin to the former. The blind faith with which many do so suggests it has become too much like the latter, with potentially dire consequences for the real people the discipline is intended to help.

The idea of economics as religion harks back to at least 2001, when economist Robert Nelson published a book on the subject. Nelson argued that the policy advice economists draw from their theories is never “value-neutral” but foists their values, dressed up to look like objective science, on the rest of us.

Take, for example, free trade. In judging its desirability, economists weigh projected costs and benefits, an approach that superficially seems objective. Yet economists decide what enters the analysis and what gets ignored. Such things as savings in wages or transport lend themselves easily to measurement in monetary terms, while others, such as the social disruption of a community, do not. The mathematical calculations give the analysis a scientific wrapping, even when the content is just an expression of values.

Similar biases influence policy considerations on everything from labor laws to climate change. As Nelson put it, “the priesthood of a modern secular religion of economic progress” has pushed a narrow vision of economic “efficiency,” wholly undeterred by a history of disastrous outcomes.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-economist-has-no-clothes

The Economist Has No Clothes

Unscientific assumptions in economic theory are undermining efforts to solve environmental problems

By Robert Nadeau


The 19th-century creators of neoclassical economics—the theory that now serves as the basis for coordinating activities in the global market system—are credited with transforming their field into a scientific discipline. But what is not widely known is that these now legendary economists—William Stanley Jevons, Léon Walras, Maria Edgeworth and Vilfredo Pareto—developed their theories by adapting equations from 19th-century physics that eventually became obsolete. Unfortunately, it is clear that neoclassical economics has also become outdated. The theory is based on unscientific assumptions that are hindering the implementation of viable economic solutions for global warming and other menacing environmental problems.

The physical theory that the creators of neoclassical economics used as a template was conceived in response to the inability of Newtonian physics to account for the phenomena of heat, light and electricity. In 1847 German physicist Hermann von Helmholtz formulated the conservation of energy principle and postulated the existence of a field of conserved energy that fills all space and unifies these phenomena. Later in the century James Maxwell, Ludwig Boltzmann and other physicists devised better explanations for electromagnetism and thermodynamics, but in the meantime, the economists had borrowed and altered Helmholtz’s equations.

The strategy the economists used was as simple as it was absurd—they substituted economic variables for physical ones. Utility (a measure of economic well-being) took the place of energy; the sum of utility and expenditure replaced potential and kinetic energy. A number of well-known mathematicians and physicists told the economists that there was absolutely no basis for making these substitutions. But the economists ignored such criticisms and proceeded to claim that they had transformed their field of study into a rigorously mathematical scientific discipline.

Strangely enough, the origins of neoclassical economics in mid-19th century physics were forgotten. Subsequent generations of mainstream economists accepted the claim that this theory is scientific. These curious developments explain why the mathematical theories used by mainstream economists are predicated on the following unscientific assumptions:

The market system is a closed circular flow between production and consumption, with no inlets or outlets.
Natural resources exist in a domain that is separate and distinct from a closed market system, and the economic value of these resources can be determined only by the dynamics that operate within this system.
The costs of damage to the external natural environment by economic activities must be treated as costs that lie outside the closed market system or as costs that cannot be included in the pricing mechanisms that operate within the system.
The external resources of nature are largely inexhaustible, and those that are not can be replaced by other resources or by technologies that minimize the use of the exhaustible resources or that rely on other resources.
There are no biophysical limits to the growth of market systems.

If the environmental crisis did not exist, the fact that neoclassical economic theory provides a coherent basis for managing economic activities in market systems could be viewed as sufficient justification for its widespread applications. But because the crisis does exist, this theory can no longer be regarded as useful even in pragmatic or utilitarian terms because it fails to meet what must now be viewed as a fundamental requirement of any economic theory—the extent to which this theory allows economic activities to be coordinated in environmentally responsible ways on a worldwide scale. Because neoclassical economics does not even acknowledge the costs of environmental problems and the limits to economic growth, it constitutes one of the greatest barriers to combating climate change and other threats to the planet. It is imperative that economists devise new theories that will take all the realities of our global system into account.

(snip)

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/greek-parliament-agrees-on-more-public-sector-austerity-and-job-cuts-a-911795.html

For a man thinking of launching an insurrection, Michalis Tamilos looks quite cheerful. Early on Wednesday evening, Tamilos, a deputy with the conservative New Democracy party, was sitting in a salon inside the Greek national parliament building. Oil portraits of Greek politicians from times gone by hung on the walls. In just a few hours, parliamentarians were to gather for a vote crucial on the country's future. Yet again.

This time, the focus was a law that would put thousands of civil servants out of a job -- part of the painful package of reforms that Greece committed to in exchange for emergency bailout aid. Some 4,000 people are to lose their jobs by the end of this year. By the end of 2014, that number is to climb to 15,000.

It is only the most recent of the myriad cuts undertaken by the Greek government in recent years. On paper, the country's leaders in Athens would seem to be well-practiced reformers. But it is a course that led to the collapse of the Socialist government under Georgios Papandreou -- and one that could ultimately destroy that of his successor, current Prime Minister Antonis Samaras. His coalition came close to collapse last month in the wake of his unilateral decision to shut down public broadcaster ERT. The station is back on the air, but Samaras lost a coalition partner, leaving him with a majority of just a handful of delegates in parliament.

Michalis Tamilos is one of those who, prior to the Wednesday evening vote, had not yet committed to support Samaras. He had reserved the right to rebel against both Samaras and his own party, primarily because the new law called for laying off municipal police officers. Furthermore, municipalities would ultimately be responsible for 70 percent of the new cuts even though they represent just 15 percent of public sector spending, said Tamilos, formerly the mayor of a small town in central Greece.

1. I want the dress. Will I have to fight you for it, X?

2. I want the voice. Doesn't everyone?

3. I wish someone (sOmeOne???) would listen to the words of this song and take them to heart

4. X, you got about the best taste in music vids of anyone I know. :mwah:

1. i'll let you have THIS dress -- but there's a couple of judy garland numbers i might have to wrestle you for.

2. she has an AMAZING voice -- my favorite Diva.

3. sOme One really should listen to this.

4.

I raced out and bought the Goldfinger soundtrack album (1964, I was 16) because of her voice.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/portugal-looks-to-more-than-austerity-to-solve-economic-crisis-a-911154.html

To get an idea of what the new Portugal could look like, it's best to leave the old Lisbon behind. The drive begins in the center of the city, surrounding Praça Dom Pedro, where old-fashioned shops sit next to chain stores found around the world, and then up Avenida da Liberdade.

After passing graffiti painted in protest against the dictates of the troika of international lenders, you finally reach one of Lisbon's many hills. At the top is the Nova School of Business and Economics. Pedro Santa Clara, a wiry man with short, silvery gray hair, wearing a perfectly tailored suit and a white shirt open at the collar, teaches there. But now the economist has slipped into the role of the pitchman, presenting what seem like futuristic models of a new campus he wants to build in a spectacular location along the coast.

"It's time to look forward," says Santa Clara.

He is referring to the business school, but he is also alluding to crisis-battered Portugal, which he believes must reinvent itself. "We have to cultivate Portugal's strengths, instead of fighting lost battles," he says.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/greece-may-need-billions-more-in-emergency-eu-aid-a-911570.html

The Greek recovery may be facing yet another hurdle. According to a report by German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung, the beleaguered country needs another massive influx of money if it is to avoid insolvency. The paper cites an unnamed official at the European Commission as saying that the "financial gap" could be as large as €10 billion.

The news comes at a difficult time for Greece and its relations with Germany. German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble is set to visit Athens this Thursday for consultations with his Greek counterpart Yannis Stournaras and with Prime Minister Antonis Samaras. Schäuble is highly unpopular in Greece for his consistent insistence on austerity. And with German elections looming in September, it seems unlikely that additional aid money for Athens will be forthcoming anytime soon.

That, though, could create further problems for Greece. The International Monetary Fund -- part of the troika of lenders keeping Athens afloat -- is only allowed to provide aid to countries whose finances are guaranteed 12 months into the future. Otherwise, it must withdraw funding. Should that happen, countries like Germany and Finland, who have made their own participation in the bailout contingent on IMF involvement, could withdraw as well.

Concerns that Greece could be in need of additional assistance are not new. France, for example, recently called for direct EU assistance for wobbly Greek banks. In addition, Greek Economy Minister Kostis Hatzidakis told German daily Die Welt earlier this month that he expects Europe to agree to another debt haircut for the country, a conjecture with which he is not alone. Indeed, senior economists in Schäuble's own ministry told the daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on Tuesday that a further reduction in the country's debt load is necessary.

http://www.businessinsider.com/realtor-ranks-exploding-2013-7

Here's a sign the housing market is maybe, possibly, overheating: the number of people becoming realtors is surging.
ChicagoGrid.com's Emmy Storms reports the Chicago Association of Realtors added 600 new members this spring, at a rate of 75 to 100 enrolled each month.

Meanwhile, Miami Association of Realtors vice president Lynda Fernandez says there's been a 25% increase in the growth rate for new members, from to 3,800 YOY from June 2012 to this year, compared with 3,000 for June 2011-June 2012. She said only a small percentage were likely to be transfers from other associations.

Chicagoland housing market analyst Gary Lucido, who linked to Storms' post, blogs that this puts us in deja-vu territory:

During the height of the real estate bubble every doorman, bar tender, and tax driver became a real estate agent so they would have a ticket to earn the outrageous commissions from friends, family, and casual acquaintances. ...

Flash forward a few years and we're almost back to those golden days, though the licensing standards are a tad more rigorous (but not much more) and money isn't exactly easy.



Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/realtor-ranks-exploding-2013-7#ixzz2ZPMuK2XV

7/18/13 Muni Retirees Face 90% Loss Under Detroit's Pending "Free-Fall" Bankruptcy

The odds of an out-of-court settlement between Detroit's emergency manager and its creditors are "extremely slim," as the WSJ reports that the troubled city's D-Day draws ever closer to becoming the largest muni default in US history.

The last straw on Detroit's camel's back of bankruptcy was following discussions last week between Kevyn Orr (Detroit's emergency manager) and the White House as any hope of a federal bailout to evert bankruptcy fizzled.

Folowing Detroit's default in June - demonstrating its insolvency - and its "negotiations in full faith" with creditors set the scene for a pending day in court.

The current plan (for now rejected by creditors) means a 90% loss for muni-worker retirees, 81% loss for unsecured creditors, and a 75% loss for secured creditors leaving a "free fall" bankruptcy filing - one without a clear plan or much agreement beforehand with creditors - the most likely outcome "because there is no other way out of here if we don't reach consensus."

more...
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-07-18/muni-retirees-face-90-loss-under-detroits-pending-free-fall-bankruptcy
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324263404578611893593441664.html?mod=WSJ_hpsMIDDLENexttoWhatsNewsSecond