Good job, Hotler!

Barbra Streisand and Kristofferson. I like that movie. It has been a long time since I've seen it.

I have sold half of my equities. I don't plan on buying bond funds, just bonds.
Anybody?

Give that a try.

The other was very generic but pretty broad ranging. This guy was a bond trader.

I could not find it.

I read Seeking Alpha and got bogged down in some income investing articles about "betting against the fed"
I still don't understand the author's premise.
http://seekingalpha.com/article/1549622-never-bet-against-the-fed

My bad. It's been one of those days.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/22/opinion/krugman-detroit-the-new-greece.html?_r=0

When Detroit declared bankruptcy, or at least tried to — the legal situation has gotten complicated — I know that I wasn’t the only economist to have a sinking feeling about the likely impact on our policy discourse. Was it going to be Greece all over again? Clearly, some people would like to see that happen. So let’s get this conversation headed in the right direction, before it’s too late....O.K., what am I talking about? As you may recall, a few years ago Greece plunged into fiscal crisis. This was a bad thing but should have had limited effects on the rest of the world; the Greek economy is, after all, quite small (actually, about one and a half times as big as the economy of metropolitan Detroit). Unfortunately, many politicians and policy makers used the Greek crisis to hijack the debate, changing the subject from job creation to fiscal rectitude...Now, the truth was that Greece was a very special case, holding few if any lessons for wider economic policy — and even in Greece, budget deficits were only one piece of the problem. Nonetheless, for a while policy discourse across the Western world was completely “Hellenized” — everyone was Greece, or was about to turn into Greece. And this intellectual wrong turn did huge damage to prospects for economic recovery.

So now the deficit scolds have a new case to misinterpret. Never mind the repeated failure of the predicted U.S. fiscal crisis to materialize, the sharp fall in predicted U.S. debt levels and the way much of the research the scolds used to justify their scolding has been discredited; let’s obsess about municipal budgets and public pension obligations! Or, actually, let’s not. Are Detroit’s woes the leading edge of a national public pensions crisis? No. State and local pensions are indeed underfunded, with experts at Boston College putting the total shortfall at $1 trillion. But many governments are taking steps to address the shortfall. These steps aren’t yet sufficient; the Boston College estimates suggest that overall pension contributions this year will be about $25 billion less than they should be. But in a $16 trillion economy, that’s just not a big deal — and even if you make more pessimistic assumptions, as some but not all accountants say you should, it still isn’t a big deal. So was Detroit just uniquely irresponsible? Again, no. Detroit does seem to have had especially bad governance, but for the most part the city was just an innocent victim of market forces.

THAT'S A NICE, NON-JUDGMENTAL WAY OF SAYING THE BANKSTERS AND THE CORPORATIONS SCREWED THE CITY OVER!-- MARKET FORCES....NICE BANDAID FOR A CANCER...DEMETER

What? Market forces have victims? Of course they do. After all, free-market enthusiasts love to quote Joseph Schumpeter about the inevitability of “creative destruction” — but they and their audiences invariably picture themselves as being the creative destroyers, not the creatively destroyed. Well, guess what: Someone always ends up being the modern equivalent of a buggy-whip producer, and it might be you. Sometimes the losers from economic change are individuals whose skills have become redundant; sometimes they’re companies, serving a market niche that no longer exists; and sometimes they’re whole cities that lose their place in the economic ecosystem. Decline happens. True, in Detroit’s case matters seem to have been made worse by political and social dysfunction. One consequence of this dysfunction has been a severe case of “job sprawl” within the metropolitan area, with jobs fleeing the urban core even when employment in greater Detroit was still rising, and even as other cities were seeing something of a city-center revival. Fewer than a quarter of the jobs on offer in the Detroit metropolitan area lie within 10 miles of the traditional central business district; in greater Pittsburgh, another former industrial giant whose glory days have passed, the corresponding figure is more than 50 percent. And the relative vitality of Pittsburgh’s core may explain why the former steel capital is showing signs of a renaissance, while Detroit just keeps sinking. So by all means let’s have a serious discussion about how cities can best manage the transition when their traditional sources of competitive advantage go away. And let’s also have a serious discussion about our obligations, as a nation, to those of our fellow citizens who have the bad luck of finding themselves living and working in the wrong place at the wrong time — because, as I said, decline happens, and some regional economies will end up shrinking, perhaps drastically, no matter what we do.

The important thing is not to let the discussion get hijacked, Greek-style. There are influential people out there who would like you to believe that Detroit’s demise is fundamentally a tale of fiscal irresponsibility and/or greedy public employees. It isn’t. For the most part, it’s just one of those things that happens now and then in an ever-changing economy.

NO, HERE I MUST TOTALLY DISAGREE...BECAUSE THE ONLY "MARKET FORCE" THAT DETROIT COULD LAY CLAIM TO IS CRIME...AND IF THE CRIME IS DUE TO THE LACK OF JOBS, DOES THAT MAKE IT A MARKET FORCE, OR IS THE CITY THE VICTIM OF WHITE FLIGHT, NEGLECT ON THE STATE AND FEDERAL LEVEL, AND BANKSTER "FINANCIAL INSTRUMENTS" SUCKING THE TILL DRY? THE STATE OF MICHIGAN SUPPORTED THE REST OF THE STATE ON DETROIT'S TAX REVENUES FOR A LONG TIME. THE LEAST IT COULD DO IS GIVE SOMETHING BACK. BUT SNYDER AND THE GOP AND EVEN THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION IS JUST DUMPING MORE OF THE SAME.

I SUSPECT THE MAIN REASON THE BANKSTERS, GOP AND SUCH ARE TRYING TO SHUT DETROIT DOWN NOW IS THAT THERE'S FINALLY A REVIVAL GOING ON. THE POOR ARE GROWING THEIR OWN FOOD, THE YOUNG AND CREATIVE ARE GENTRIFYING, THE SMART HOME BUYER IS GETTING A BARGAIN, ETC. DETROIT WAS IN GREAT DANGER OF FROWING FROM THE GRASSROOTS UP.

"CAN'T LET THAT HAPPEN....WOULDN'T BE PRUDENT!" GHW BUSH.

When did you start running ebay auctions?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/City-of-Detroit-/130951248586?nma=true&si=ZNl3WLyvuGbywWPKcdMD5L1pFyc%253D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557


:grin:

It's not me, hamerfan!

I might put in a bid, though. For sentimental reasons.

Now, there's a solution--Crowd Sourcing Detroit!

I was going to bid

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-07-23/biggest-banks-face-fed-restoring-barriers-in-commodities-review.html

The Federal Reserve’s review of its decision to let banks store, transport and trade raw materials signals a potential rebuilding of the wall between banking and commerce that legislation and rulemaking have eroded.

The central bank said July 19 that it’s reviewing a decade-old decision that physical commodities are “complementary” to banking, allowing lenders such as Citigroup Inc. (C) and JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) to operate in both industries. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) and Morgan Stanley may be less at risk from the review as some businesses owned before the firms became bank holding companies in 2008 are grandfathered.

The move into physical commodities exposed the biggest banks to additional risks and allegations of price manipulation, creating potential legal liabilities and threatening to damage their reputations. The shift also weakened the barrier between government-insured banks and other commerce established by the 1956 Bank Holding Company Act.

“What the Fed has to do, what they are doing, is setting boundaries where the banks really will pull back into what their primary business is,” said Marty Mosby, an analyst at Guggenheim Securities LLC in Memphis, Tennessee. Regulators are “trying to re-envision how they should draw these boundaries. They got kind of blurred.”

The Huge Threat to Capitalism That Republicans Are Ignoring

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/07/the-huge-threat-to-capitalism-that-republicans-are-ignoring/277985/



Over the weekend, the New York Times published a jaw-dropping story about how Wall Street investment banks are slyly manipulating commodities markets to make billions at the expense of consumers.

Is that description too abstract? Here's the lead example:

Hundreds of millions of times a day, thirsty Americans open a can of soda, beer or juice. And every time they do it, they pay a fraction of a penny more because of a shrewd maneuver by Goldman Sachs and other financial players that ultimately costs consumers billions of dollars.

The story of how this works begins in 27 industrial warehouses in the Detroit area where a Goldman subsidiary stores customers' aluminum. Each day, a fleet of trucks shuffles 1,500-pound bars of the metal among the warehouses. Two or three times a day, sometimes more, the drivers make the same circuits. They load in one warehouse. They unload in another. And then they do it again.This industrial dance has been choreographed by Goldman to exploit pricing regulations set up by an overseas commodities exchange, an investigation by The New York Times has found. The back-and-forth lengthens the storage time. And that adds many millions a year to the coffers of Goldman, which owns the warehouses and charges rent to store the metal. It also increases prices paid by manufacturers and consumers across the country. Tyler Clay, a forklift driver who worked at the Goldman warehouses until early this year, called the process "a merry-go-round of metal."

Only a tenth of a cent or so of an aluminum can's purchase price can be traced back to the strategy. But multiply that amount by the 90 billion aluminum cans consumed in the United States each year -- and add the tons of aluminum used in things like cars, electronics and house siding -- and the efforts by Goldman and other financial players has cost American consumers more than $5 billion over the last three years, say former industry executives, analysts and consultants.

I just love these bass-ackwards defenses of capitalism mounted so frequently by the establishment press - tell me, NYTs, how does this NOT represent "capitalism?" Does it not make sense for GS to do this because they CAN?

and the pooling of many people's capital (or savings) for large projects.

Kapitalism is a quasi-religious cult practiced by modern-day pirates and would-be Fascists. The only way to defend the public interest, the People and the Nation State from these ethically and morally challenged criminals is through tough regulation, prosecution, and stiffly progressive taxation.

Otherwise, a systemic infection of the Economy and the Politics by Kapitalism will produce all kinds of secondary illnesses: Elite Aristocracy, fraud, feudalism, etc., that will cripple or kill our founding principles as a nation.

Such pooling can occur through Nationalization on the Nation-State scale or through Communalism (for lack of a better word, if there is one ...) on the community scale. And it can occur through pooling of Labor rather than savings (say, a barn-raising).

But then, make no bones - I am anti-Capitalism, in any of its forms.

We have no argument there. It is better to take the potential for abuse out by not putting it in, in the first place!

http://www.businessinsider.com/quants-meet-the-math-geniuses-running-wall-street-2013-7

Forget Gordon Gekko. Old-style City traders are being replaced by maths geniuses who use super-computers to beat the markets. But are 'quants’ a force for good or evil?

At seven minutes past one on the afternoon of Tuesday April 23 this year a tweet from the AP news agency in Washington was published. It read “Breaking: Two Explosions in the White House and Barack Obama is injured.” This was not true – the AP account had been hacked by a shady group of technology nerds calling themselves The Syrian Electronic Army – but within milliseconds the tweet had been noticed and flagged by trading computers on Wall Street.

Programmed to scan the internet for words or phrases that might effect stock markets, the unthinking machines had immediately seized upon the tweet, noted the proximity of the words “Obama”, “explosions” and “White House” and unleashed a torrent of trades. Within seconds, the Dow Jones had plunged 140 points and more than $200 billion of capital had been wiped out.

A few minutes later the report was exposed as a hoax and the markets quickly returned to their pre-tweet levels. But, to many, the idea that one fake tweet could have such an enormous impact on the financial markets was incredible. Who was running Wall Street? Humans or machines?



Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/quants-meet-the-math-geniuses-running-wall-street-2013-7#ixzz2ZsLZQG5u

financing future economic growth with future savings to protect america from economic decline

http://www.nationofchange.org/financing-future-economic-growth-future-savings-solutions-protect-america-economic-decline-137450624

While conservatives blame poor governance and unions for the fall of Detroit and other American cities, which have filed for bankruptcy, there is another side to the story. The horrific part is that there are many cities that are headed in the exact same direction as Detroit. The entire country could follow Detroit's lead as tectonic shifts in the technologies of production and globalization to produce at the lowest possible cost destroy jobs and devalue the worth of labor.

The United States is headed for more personal and family economic turmoil and social unrest and upheaval due to a faulty economic system that fosters the concentration of wealth-creating, income-generating productive capital––the ownership of non-human productive assets such as land, structures, machines, super-automation, robotics, digital computerized operations, etc. The system is faulty because economic growth is based on individual and family accumulations of savings, with ALL economic growth dependent on past savings "invested" to further concentrate productive capital ownership. This will leave the vast majority, or the so-called 99 percent, who are property-less as related to ownership of productive capital assets, unable to save sufficiently and instead struggling to sustain their livelihood month to month, as they fear for job loss and having to rely on taxpayer-supported government welfare.

To change the rules and reform the system, the outcome of FUTURE policies must be to facilitate financing economic growth with "FUTURE SAVINGS," and simultaneously create new capitalist owners of wealth-creating, income-generating productive capital assets. "FUTURE SAVINGS" are profits used to repay loans for new capital formation and acquisition of existing productive assets by new owners.

Critically, we must recognized that Americans and the world's people do not have to end up desolute and bereft as the FUTURE unfolds due to fundamentally flawed assumptions in modern economics and finance: that new capital formation is impossible without first cutting consumption, saving, then investing. The result has been that the "supply of loanable funds" derived from past savings determines the "production possibilities curve" or rate at which economic growth can be sustained.

http://www.salon.com/2013/07/20/recovery_for_whom_americas_new_economy_is_as_dysfunctional_as_ever_partner/

There’s a new normal in the American economy for vast slices of society and it’s discouragingly tough, despite all the cheerleading from the White House and economists that the country is in a slow but steady recovery. If anything, the new American economy has undergone a structural shift where far too many jobs are not paying enough to cover basic living expenses and money worries are simmering and never-ending.

“It’s difficult to point fingers at people and say, ‘You screwed up in some way’ or ‘You aren’t working hard enough,’” said Erica Seifert, a senior associate at Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, which recently conducted a series of focus groups in Florida and Ohio among young college women, Latino voters and white working-class voters. “This economy isn’t functional. The jobs don’t pay.”

OF THE 8 POINTS MADE, THE LAST IS MOST SIGNIFICANT:

8. The political system is unresponsive

http://news.yahoo.com/sec-voted-unanimously-pursue-charges-against-sacs-cohen-233613321.html

U.S. securities regulators were united in their decision to file civil charges against billionaire hedge fund owner Steven A. Cohen last week, in a high-stakes case that could result in Cohen being barred from the industry, people familiar with the case told Reuters. The charges by the Securities and Exchange Commission against Cohen still fall short of what the SEC had hoped for. The agency has been struggling to uncover evidence implicating Cohen with insider-trading, one of those people said. ...the charges are not fraud-based and do not carry stiff penalties. But in a move that could greatly curtail Cohen's income, the SEC is seeking to bar him from managing other people's money. It is still unclear whether the SEC will seek a lifetime bar, or a bar for a shorter duration. But even a temporary industry bar could pose a major hassle. That's because the process to apply for re-admission after the bar expires is tougher for investment advisers and broker-dealers than some other professions, such as lawyers. In order to be re-admitted, the person must demonstrate how he or she will be supervised so that investors will not be harmed before the SEC will agree to sign off. For someone like Cohen, it might be difficult to demonstrate how he would be supervised...

In a last-minute 9 a.m. meeting on Friday, with a five-year statute of limitations deadline approaching, enforcement lawyers presented SEC commissioners with a lengthy memo urging them to vote to charge Cohen with failing to supervise former SAC Capital Advisors portfolio manager Mathew Martoma and SAC executive Michael Steinberg, sources said. Both Martoma and Steinberg are facing criminal and civil insider trading charges. SEC Chair Mary Jo White, an independent, and Democratic SEC Commissioners Elisse Walter and Luis Aguilar attended the meeting and subsequently voted in favor of filing charges, these people said. SEC Republican Commissioner Troy Paredes was on a plane en route to Texas at the time, but he cast a yes vote after he landed, according to one of the sources. The SEC's other Republican commissioner, Daniel Gallagher, was out of town last week and did not participate in any of the SEC's closed door enforcement meetings.

Jonathan Gasthalter, a spokesman for SAC Capital, declined to comment beyond his statement on Friday, in which he said the SEC's case was without merit and that Cohen intended to fight the charges. Some people are seeing the SEC's case against Cohen as an example of White's pledge to get tough and flex the SEC's enforcement muscles. She has already established a new policy in which the SEC will occasionally try to extract admissions of wrongdoing in settlements, or else force the case to trial. Others internally, however, see the Cohen case as an effort to save face after several long, hard years of investigating him for insider-trading.

In all of that time, there has not been enough evidence to suggest he engaged in insider-trading. In addition, despite the fact that several of his employees have been charged criminally with insider-trading, no one has stepped forward to testify against him as a government witness. Nevertheless, the filing of the Cohen case last week was one of several high-profile actions by the SEC in what appears to be pattern of cracking down on alleged law-breakers. On Thursday, the SEC also voted behind closed doors in a 3-1 vote to reject a deal between the enforcement division and hedge fund manager Philip Falcone and his hedge fund Harbinger Capital Partners. That settlement was rejected amid concerns it was too lax, a person told Reuters last week. In addition, the SEC also charged the city of Miami and its former budget director with fraud on Friday in a rare case in which the SEC accused the city of being a repeat offender by violating a prior cease-and-desist order for similar misconduct in 2003.

MORE

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_EARNS_DUPONT?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2013-07-23-09-16-54

DOVER, Del. (AP) -- The chemicals giant DuPont reported a nearly 12 percent decline in second-quarter earnings partly because of lower pricing for titanium dioxide, a whitening pigment, and said Tuesday that it is exploring a possible sale or spinoff of its performance chemicals unit.

DuPont Co. is a global leader in production of titanium dioxide, or TiO2, but has wrestled for more than a year with sluggish demand for the whitener, which is used in wide range of products from automotive and house paints to toothpaste.

It is a key part of DuPont's performance chemicals business.

The Wilmington, Del.-based company reported net income of $1.03 billion, or $1.11 per share, for the quarter ending June 30, compared to $1.17 billion, or $1.23 per share, for the same period last year.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_EARNS_UPS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2013-07-23-08-45-44

DALLAS (AP) -- UPS said Tuesday that second-quarter profit fell 4 percent as customers shifted from premium toward lower-priced shipped services.

The company called the results disappointing and said it was adapting to the changing market.

United Parcel Service Co. said that it earned $1.07 billion, or $1.13 per share, down from $1.12 billion, or $1.15 per share, a year earlier.

The big delivery company tipped off investors about the headline number last week, so analysts were expecting the lower earnings per share.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/O/OIL_PRICES?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2013-07-23-07-44-56

The price of oil fell to around $106 a barrel Tuesday after weak U.S. home sales figures and ahead of a weekly report on America's inventories of crude that was expected to show another drop in supplies.

By early afternoon in Europe, benchmark crude for September delivery was down 96 cents at $105.98 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Oil slid $1.14 on Monday after the government said sales of previously occupied homes in the U.S. slipped 1.2 percent in June to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.08 million. Any sign that the U.S. economic recovery is slowing can cause the oil price to fall.

Analysts said speculative trading was also likely behind the sudden turnaround in the oil price

Speculation, they say? Who would have thought it?

(don't tell Tansy...she'll berate me)

I just bought two plum trees (semi-dwarf) on clearance. You need two to pollinate...I even know where I'm putting them!

The peaches are growing, slowly. I think I need to devote some time to water and fertilizer...

The heat wave is not entirely broken, but it's cooler and a bit drier. We got a sprinkle this morning; we're hoping for more later today.

. . . . insinuate that I would berate you for planting trees!!

(I'm mildly insulted, but I'll get over it.)

I think planting trees is wonderful.


In fact, if I get back from vacation and find out BF has cut any of mine down, I may have to retaliate. I love trees.

It's the expansion of the List....although, it shouldn't take hardly any time...the soil is friable, fertile and ready to plant (if the blazing sun will just stop shining all the time...).

When the weather breaks...


(They have TREES in Arizona?)

I knew you could do it!



I have arrived at my vacation destination without incident and now I'm trying very hard to have a good time. It's not always . . . . easy.

And such a great 'toon for today.
RIP, Helen. You've earned it.

I gravitate to this particular thread on DU daily to see whether I'm rich nor not. It's far more interesting than plowing through dry, official financial sites.

I'm glad you're filling in!

I could have not done it without all of you folks. All I'm doing is pulling the pin on this puppy for a few days. You guys are what gives SMW soul and spirit. You are th eones that make SMW a little island of sanity.
Peace
hot