And it continues with providing Phil (or Bill) with a smartphone so that he can always be on call, and have access to the company network.

Take Larry Summers----please!

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/bad-week-for-center-021314



It has not been a good couple of days for corporate-backed kabuki centrism in our politics. First, there is the sad story of The Can Kicks Back, aka Pete Peterson Youth, which was supposed to focus the attention of young people on how their pockets were being picked by greedy oldsters, and how they could take that FICA money that was coming out their paychecks and invest them in Shitbag Mortgages, LLC, where there money would be managed by Peterson's pals until they stole most of it and lost the rest. But, I'm paraphrasing. Anyway, The Can Kicks Back is, well, broke.


As soon as I'm done laughing at the glorious irony of it, I'll get around to laughing at the fact that Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson -- figures of fun for anyone with a brain -- also went down with this scheme. But the grandaddy of all progressive "centrists" is Al From, the founder of the Democratic Leadership Conference, who now has written a book about how he saved the Democratic party -- nay, saved the nation -- from obsolescence, a manufacturing base, and Jesse Jackson. But, again, I'm paraphrasing, But Rick Perlstein isn't. One of the worst political events I ever attended was the 1982 Democratic "midterm convention" in Philadelphia, at which the party elders were still cowering from the beating they'd taken in 1980, and you could see it all coming, the rise of the corporate Democrats -- the chairman was a banker pal of Jimmy Carter's named Charles Manatt, who went on to mastermind the presidential campaign of Walter Mondale -- and the neocon Democrats, and the National Security Democrats and, basically, the Democrats who were white and well-off. This was the seedbed for Al From and, yes, for Bill Clinton, and for the welfare reform and NAFTA and the complicity in the economic policies that eventually wrecked the economy in 2008.

Now, though, there is a serious strain of economic populism pushing back against the legacy of Charlie Manatt and Al From that is being led by Jesse Jackson. If it weren't for the rock fight that's erupted within the Republican party, and if it weren't for the unfathomable fascination on the part of the courtier press with Hillary Clinton's every thought, you'd be hearing more and more about it.

But the pure hilarity of it all is that what economic populism within the Democratic party is aiming at is giving us a center that is actually in the center. Before the Republicans guzzled the supply-side Flavor-Aid, and the Democrats cozied up to the people who also financed the Republicans, the center meant good jobs and good wages and an economic system that didn't smack of a carnival midway. This is why Senator Professor Warren sounds as appealing as she does. She is the first person to set up shop in the new center.

AND MORE POWER TO HER!

http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/21841-paul-krugman-redefining-the-middle-class

One of the odd things about the United States has long been the immense range of people who consider themselves to be middle class - and are deluding themselves. Low-paid workers who would be considered poor by international standards, say with incomes below half the median, nonetheless consider themselves lower-middle-class; people with incomes four or five times the median consider themselves, at most, upper-middle-class. But this may be changing. According to a new Pew survey, there has been a sharp increase in the number of people calling themselves lower class, and a somewhat smaller rise in the number calling themselves lower-middle, so that at this point the combined "lower" categories are close to a plurality of the population - in fact, closing in on, um, 47 percent.

This is, I believe, a very significant development. The politics of poverty since the 1970s have rested on the popular belief that the poor are Those People, not like us hard-working, real Americans. This belief has been out of touch with reality for decades - but only now does reality seem to be breaking in. But what it means is that conservatives who claim that character defects are the reason for poverty, and that poverty programs are bad because they make life too easy, are now talking to an audience with large numbers of Not Those People who realize that they are among those who sometimes need help from the safety net.

And this still has a way to go. To Americans at the 86th percentile: If you think you're upper-middle-class, you really have no idea....My argument above has triggered some predictable reactions, which I'd place under two headings: (1) "But they have cellphones!" and (2) it's about how you behave, not how much money you have. My answer to both of these would be to say that when we talk about being middle-class, we have two crucial attributes of that status in mind: security and opportunity.

By security, I mean that you have enough resources and backup that the ordinary emergencies of life won't plunge you into the abyss. This means having decent health insurance, reasonably stable employment and enough financial assets that having to replace your car or your boiler isn't a crisis.

By opportunity I mainly mean being able to get your children a good education and access to job prospects, not feeling that doors are shut because you just can't afford to do the right thing.

If you don't have these things, I would say that you don't lead a middle-class life, even if you have a car and a few electronic gadgets that weren't around during the era when most Americans really were middle-class, and no matter how clean, sober and prudent your behavior may be.

MORE CASTIGATING THE FINANCIALLY EMBARRASSED AND UNSUPPORTED...REALLY, DR. KRUGMAN, I EXPECTED BETTER OF YOU.

Before the crash of September 2008—the worst economic downturn in the United States since the 1929 crash that marked the beginning of the Great Depression—most Americans had never heard the term “too big to fail.” But that term became all too familiar when hundreds of billions of dollars were set aside to bail out the nation’s largest financial institutions. And many of the mega-banks that caused the panic of 2008 have become even larger.

In November, Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts warned that “the four biggest banks are 30% larger than they were five years ago” (JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup and Wells Fargo). Warren isn’t the only one who is worried. Many other proponents of financial reform, from economists Dean Baker (co-founder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research), Joseph E. Stiglitz (a professor at Columbia University) and Simon Johnson to politicians like Democratic Florida Rep. Alan Grayson, have been warning Americans about the ongoing threat too-big-to-fail banks pose.

Johnson and Baker have both said one benefit of breaking up mega-banks would be decreasing their political influence, while Stiglitz has warned that mega-banks are “ too big to manage and be held accountable” and that the bigger banks are allowed to become, “the greater the threat to our economies and our societies.”

Apologists for the bankster bailouts and the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) like to point out that most of the major recipients of bailout money paid back everything they owed. But economist Robert Reich, former secretary of labor under the Clinton administration, frequently responds that those apologists neglect to mention the long-lasting damage those banks did to the U.S. economy and all of the poverty, unemployment and home foreclosures they caused. Also, in November 2011, Bloomberg News revealed that the Federal Reserve had secretly loaned the U.S.’ largest banks an estimated total of $13 billion (the loans had not been disclosed to Congress, and that information was obtained via the Freedom of Information Act).

MORE AT LINK: http://www.alternet.org/economy/6-financial-monsters-have-only-gotten-bigger-after-destroying-economy?akid=11501.227380.dOYSbj&rd=1&src=newsletter958086&t=8

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-vampire-squid-strikes-again-the-mega-banks-most-devious-scam-yet-20140212


Banks are no longer just financing heavy industry. They are actually buying it up and inventing bigger, bolder and scarier scams than ever...

AND THEREBY CONTINUING TO PILLAGE AND DESTROY AMERICA. MUST READ

The European parliament is to ditch demands on Wednesday LAST WEEK that EU governments give guarantees of asylum and security to Edward Snowden, the National Security Agency whistleblower.

The parliament's civil liberties committee is to vote on more than 500 amendments to the first ever parliamentary inquiry into the NSA and GCHQ scandal, a 60-page report that is damning about the scale and the impact of mass surveillance. But there is no consensus on an amendment proposed by the Greens calling on EU governments to assure Snowden of his safety in the event that he emerges from hiding in Russia and comes to Europe.

Amid what key MEPs have described as intense pressure from national governments on parliament – from the Conservatives and their allies, from the mainstream centre-right and from social democrats – the asylum call has no chance of passing.

"The amendment asking for asylum won't go through," said Claude Moraes, the British Labour MEP who is the principal author of the report. "That was a red line for the right. There was never going to be a realistic majority for that."

The proposed change to the report would have read: "Parliament calls on EU member states to drop criminal charges, if any, against Edward Snowden and to offer him protection from prosecution, extradition or rendition by third parties, in recognition of his status as whistleblower and international human rights defender."

Instead the report will call for international protection for whistleblowers without mentioning Snowden by name. Another amendment calling on the Americans not to prosecute Snowden is also unlikely to be adopted, parliamentary sources said.

"The only reason for this whole thing is Snowden and now he doesn't get mentioned. It's ridiculous," said Jan-Philip Albrecht, a German Green and co-author of the amendment.

MORE AT LINK: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/12/edward-snowden-nsa-asylum-demand-european-parliament?CMP=ema_565

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/feb/12/bitcoin-exchanges-suspend-conversions-hacker-attack?CMP=ema_565

Three online exchanges for the bitcoin virtual currency have suspended conversions into state-backed currencies, saying they are under attack from hackers suspected of trying to create fraudulent transactions.

The value of the currency has plunged as the attack has intensified, from $926 on 5 February to $530 on 12 February on MtGox, one of the affected exchanges. Bitstamp, based in Slovenia, and BTC-e, in Bulgaria, also halted withdrawals indefinitely on Wednesday as they came under attack.

The moves follow crackdowns by China in December and Russia last week on use of the cybercurrency, which some authorities fear could be used for money laundering, funding terrorism or tax evasion.

"This is a denial-of-service (DoS] attack," said Jinyoung Lee Englund, a spokeswoman for the Bitcoin Foundation, a trade organisation for exchanges. "Whoever is doing this is not stealing coins, but is succeeding in preventing some transactions from confirming. It's important to note that DoS attacks do not affect people's bitcoin wallets or funds."

In a statement, MtGox said: "A bug in the bitcoin software makes it possible for someone to use the bitcoin network to alter transaction details to make it seem like a sending of bitcoins to a bitcoin wallet did not occur when in fact it did occur. Since the transaction appears as if it has not proceeded correctly, the bitcoins may be re-sent." Such "double spending" could destroy trust in the system.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/fog-over-us-economy-unlikely-to-lift-soon-2014-02-16?siteid=YAHOOB

Fog over U.S. economy unlikely to lift soon
Terrible weather masks whether growth is stable or deteriorating


IT'S NOT THE WEATHER THAT CREATES THE FOG--IT'S THE FRAUD, THEFT, AND OUTRIGHT LYING....



WHAT A CONVENIENT EXCUSE!

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/02/15/one-nation-under-guard/

Another dubious first for America: We now employ as many private security guards as high school teachers — over one million of them, or nearly double their number in 1980. And that’s just a small fraction of what we call “guard labor.” In addition to private security guards, that means police officers, members of the armed forces, prison and court officials, civilian employees of the military, and those producing weapons: a total of 5.2 million workers in 2011. That is a far larger number than we have of teachers at all levels.

What is happening in America today is both unprecedented in our history, and virtually unique among Western democratic nations. The share of our labor force devoted to guard labor has risen fivefold since 1890 — a year when, in case you were wondering, the homicide rate was much higher than today. Is this the curse of affluence? Or of ethnic diversity? We don’t think so. The guard-labor share of employment in the United States is four times what it is in Sweden, where living standards rival America’s. And Britain, with its diverse population, uses substantially less guard labor than the United States.

In America, growing inequality has been accompanied by a boom in gated communities and armies of doormen controlling access to upscale apartment buildings. We did not count the doormen, or those producing the gates, locks and security equipment. One could quibble about the numbers; we have elsewhere adopted a broader definition, including prisoners, work supervisors with disciplinary functions, and others.

But however one totes up guard labor in the United States, there is a lot of it, and it seems to go along with economic inequality. States with high levels of income inequality — New York and Louisiana — employ twice as many security workers (as a fraction of their labor force) as less unequal states like Idaho and New Hampshire. When we look across advanced industrialized countries, we see the same pattern: the more inequality, the more guard labor. As the graph shows, the United States leads in both:

http://news.yahoo.com/detroit-bankruptcy-bond-fight-watershed-muni-market-130913192--sector.html

The city of Detroit's effort to declare some of its general obligation bonds as unsecured debt will be challenged in bankruptcy court Wednesday in what could be a precedent-setting turn in the largest-ever municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history.

The issue in front of federal bankruptcy Judge Steven Rhodes is whether a pledge of Detroit tax revenue to pay off the voter-approved bond issues is a binding obligation under Michigan law, as argued by bond insurers in two lawsuits, or merely a promise.

The outcome of the dispute could have a far-reaching impact on the $3.7 trillion municipal market, where general obligation bonds made up some 60 percent of the issues sold in the last decade.

That could reduce investor interest in not only any future Detroit borrowings but in debt from other Michigan municipalities, forcing them to pay higher interest rates. And it could trigger similar concerns for municipal borrowers in other states. Investors always have considered the full faith and credit pledge by cities, school districts and other issuers to pay off those bonds "sacrosanct," according to Natalie Cohen, the head of muni research at Wells Fargo Securities.

But Detroit's effort to declare some of its GO bonds to be unsecured debt could change that assumption...

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/in-korea-they-punish-banks-for-id-theft-2014-02-17?siteid=YAHOOB

In the U.S. and many other developed economies, the hacking of customer information isn’t all that uncommon. And (in the popular imagination, at least) the companies from which the data are stolen often seem to react to such thefts with little more than a sigh and a shrug.

Sure, they might post a message of apology, or even offer a discount or two, but it’s as if it’s no big deal. And that’s assuming the company in question even reports the hacking.

Ah, but in South Korea, they don’t mess around. Korea’s financial-services regulator announced Sunday that three firms which suffered the theft of consumers’ data last year would be barred from issuing any new credit cards or extending any loans until mid-May. (Read more on the incident here.) In fact, the executives at the companies involved showed their contrition by going before television cameras and making deep bows and personal apologies. Some executives reportedly resigned over the incident, even though the alleged ID thieves were caught and arrested...

http://news.yahoo.com/foreign-banks-bracing-tough-u-fed-capital-rules-130639404--sector.html

Overseas banks look set to win only minor concessions when the Federal Reserve signs off on new capital rules next week, as they become increasingly resigned to the fact that the cost of doing business in the United States will go up.

The Fed, whose board of governors meets on Tuesday, will require overseas banks to hold as much capital in the United States as their local rivals.

The reform is designed to address concerns that U.S. taxpayers will need to foot the bill if European and Asian regulators treat U.S. subsidiaries with low priority if they need to rescue one of their banks.

Foreign banks with sizeable operations on Wall Street such as Deutsche Bank and Barclays have pushed back hard against the plan because it means they will need to transfer costly capital from Europe...

https://www.commondreams.org/view/2014/02/15-0


The credit card business is now the banking industry’s biggest cash cow, and it’s largely due to lucrative hidden fees...

You pay off your credit card balance every month, thinking you are taking advantage of the “interest-free grace period” and getting free credit. You may even use your credit card when you could have used cash, just to get the free frequent flier or cash-back rewards. But those popular features are misleading. Even when the balance is paid on time every month, credit card use imposes a huge hidden cost on users—hidden because the cost is deducted from what the merchant receives, then passed on to you in the form of higher prices.(Photo via Flickr / wootam! / Creative Commons License)

Visa and MasterCard charge merchants about 2% of the value of every credit card transaction, and American Express charges even more. That may not sound like much. But consider that for balances that are paid off monthly (meaning most of them), the banks make 2% or more on a loan averaging only about 25 days (depending on when in the month the charge was made and when in the grace period it was paid). Two percent interest for 25 days works out to a 33.5% return annually (1.02^(365/25) – 1), and that figure may be conservative.

Merchant fees were originally designed as a way to avoid usury and Truth-in-Lending laws. Visa and MasterCard are independent entities, but they were set up by big Wall Street banks, and the card-issuing banks get about 80% of the fees. The annual returns not only fall in the usurious category, but they are returns on other people’s money – usually the borrower’s own money! Here is how it works . . . .

The Ultimate Shell Game

Economist Hyman Minsky observed that anyone can create money; the trick is to get it accepted. The function of the credit card company is to turn your IOU, or promise to pay, into a “negotiable instrument” acceptable in the payment of debt. A negotiable instrument is anything that is signed and convertible into money or that can be used as money.

Under Article 9 of the Uniform Commercial Code, when you sign the merchant’s credit card charge receipt, you are creating a “negotiable instrument or other writing which evidences a right to the payment of money.” This negotiable instrument is deposited electronically into the merchant’s checking account, a special account required of all businesses that accept credit. The account goes up by the amount on the receipt, indicating that the merchant has been paid. The charge receipt is forwarded to an “acquiring settlement bank,” which bundles your charges and sends them to your own bank. Your bank then sends you a statement and you pay the balance with a check, causing your transaction account to be debited at your bank.

The net effect is that your charge receipt (a negotiable instrument) has become an “asset” against which credit has been advanced. The bank has simply monetized your IOU, turning it into money. The credit cycle is so short that this process can occur without the bank’s own money even being involved. Debits and credits are just shuffled back and forth between accounts.

Timothy Madden is a Canadian financial analyst who built software models of credit card accounts in the early 1990s. In personal correspondence, he estimates that payouts from the bank’s own reserves are necessary only about 2% of the time; and the 2% merchant’s fee is sufficient to cover these occasions. The “reserves” necessary to back the short-term advances are thus built into the payments themselves, without drawing from anywhere else.

As for the interest, Madden maintains:

The interest is all gravy because the transactions are funded in fact by the signed payment voucher issued by the card-user at the point of purchase. Assume that the monthly gross sales that are run through credit/charge-cards globally double, from the normal $300 billion to $600 billion for the year-end holiday period. The card companies do not have to worry about where the extra $300 billion will come from because it is provided by the additional $300 billion of signed vouchers themselves. . . .

That is also why virtually all banks everywhere have to write-off 100% of credit/charge-card accounts in arrears for 180 days. The basic design of the system recognizes that, once set in motion, the system is entirely self-financing requiring zero equity investment by the operator . . . . The losses cannot be charged off against the operator’s equity because they don’t have any. In the early 1990?s when I was building computer/software models of the credit/charge-card system, my spreadsheets kept “blowing up” because of “divide by zero” errors in my return-on-equity display.

A Private Sales Tax

All this sheds light on why the credit card business has become the most lucrative pursuit of the banking industry. At one time, banking was all about taking deposits and making commercial and residential loans. But in recent years, according to the Federal Reserve, “credit card earnings have been almost always higher than returns on all commercial bank activities.”

Partly, this is because the interest charged on credit card debt is higher than on other commercial loans. But it is on the fees that the banks really make their money. There are late payment fees, fees for exceeding the credit limit, balance transfer fees, cash withdrawal fees, and annual fees, in addition to the very lucrative merchant fees that accrue at the point of sale whether the customer pays his bill or not. The merchant absorbs the fees, and the customers cover the cost with higher prices.

A 2% merchants’ fee is the financial equivalent of a 2% sales tax – one that now adds up to over $30 billion annually in the US. The effect on trade is worse than either a public sales tax or a financial transaction tax (or Tobin tax), since these taxes are designed to be spent back into the economy on services and infrastructure. A private merchant’s tax simply removes purchasing power from the economy.

As financial blogger Yves Smith observes:

[W]hen anyone brings up Tobin taxes (small charges on every [financial] trade) as a way to pay for the bailout and discourage speculation, the financial services industry becomes utterly apoplectic. . . . Yet here in our very midst, we have a Tobin tax equivalent on a very high proportion of retail trade. . . . [Y]ou can think of the rapacious Visa and Mastercharge charges for debit transactions . . . as having two components: the fee they’d be able to charge if they faced some competition, and the premium they extract by controlling the market and refusing to compete on price. In terms of its effect on commerce, this premium is worse than a Tobin tax.

A Tobin tax is intended to have the positive effect of dampening speculation. A private tax on retail sales has the negative effect of dampening consumer trade. It is a self-destruct mechanism that consumes capital and credit at every turn of the credit cycle.

The lucrative credit card business is a major factor in the increasing “financialization” of the economy. Companies like General Electric are largely abandoning product innovation and becoming credit card companies, because that’s where the money is. Financialization is killing the economy, productivity, innovation, and consumer demand.

Busting the Monopoly

Exorbitant merchant fees are made possible because the market is monopolized by a tiny number of credit card companies, and entry into the market is difficult. To participate, you need to be part of a network, and the network requires that all participating banks charge a pre-set fee.

The rules vary, however, by country. An option available in some countries is to provide cheaper credit card services through publicly-owned banks. In Costa Rica, 80% of deposits are held in four publicly-owned banks; and all offer Visa/MC debit cards and will take Visa/MC credit cards. Businesses that choose to affiliate with the two largest public banks pay no transaction fees for that bank’s cards, and for the cards of other banks they pay only a tiny fee, sufficient to cover the bank’s costs.

That works in Costa Rica; but in the US, Visa/MC fees are pre-set, and public banks would have to charge that fee to participate in the system. There is another way, however, that they could recapture the merchant fees and use them for the benefit of the people: by returning them in the form of lower taxes or increased public services.

Local governments pay hefty fees for credit card use themselves. According to the treasurer’s office, the City and County of San Francisco pay $4 million annually just for bank fees, and more than half this sum goes to merchant fees. If the government could recapture these charges through its own bank, it could use the proceeds to expand public services without raising taxes.

If we allowed government to actually make some money, it could be self-funding without taxing the citizens. When an alternative public system is in place, the private mega-bank dinosaurs will no longer be “too big to fail.” They can be allowed to fade into extinction, in a natural process of evolution toward a more efficient and sustainable system of exchange.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.



Ellen Brown developed her research skills as an attorney practicing civil litigation in Los Angeles. In Web of Debt, her latest of eleven books, she turns those skills to an analysis of the Federal Reserve and “the money trust.” She shows how this private cartel has usurped the power to create money from the people themselves, and how we the people can get it back. She is president of the Public Banking Institute, http://PublicBankingInstitute.org, and has websites at http://WebofDebt.com and http://EllenBrown.com.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-18/fx-traders-facing-extinction-as-computers-replace-humans.html

Electronic dealing, which accounted for 66 percent of all currency transactions in 2013 and 20 percent in 2001, will increase to 76 percent within five years, according to Aite Group LLC, a Boston-based consulting firm that reviewed Bank for International Settlements data. About 81 percent of spot trading -- the buying and selling of currency for immediate delivery -- will be electronic by 2018, Aite said.

“Foreign-exchange traders are much like stock floor traders: a rapidly dying breed,” said Charles Geisst, author of “Wall Street: A History” and a finance professor at Manhattan College in Riverdale, New York. “Once the banks realize they are costing them money, the positions will dwindle quickly.”

At least a dozen regulators are investigating allegations first reported by Bloomberg News in June that traders colluded to rig benchmarks in the $5.3 trillion-a-day currency market. That scrutiny may give banks an opportunity to cull more staff, say analysts including Christopher Wheeler of Mediobanca SpA in London. It’s also boosting demand from clients for greater transparency in pricing and transaction charges, accelerating a longer-term shift in trading onto electronic platforms.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-18/top-two-gold-forecasters-remain-bearish-after-2014-rally.html

The two most-accurate gold forecasters are holding to their bearish forecasts for 2014 even after the metal posted its best start to a year since 1983.

Futures rose 9.7 percent in 2014 through Feb. 14, rebounding from the biggest annual drop in three decades, and reached a three-month high. Holdings in exchange-traded products backed by bullion increased by 3.2 metric tons last week, the most since December 2012, after slumping 869.1 tons last year when prices slid 28 percent.

“I just see this as a corrective move,” said Robin Bhar, the head of metals research at Societe Generale SA in London and the most-accurate forecaster tracked by Bloomberg in the past two years. “We would still want to be bearish gold,” said Bhar, who expects a fourth-quarter average of $1,050.

Bullion got a boost this year from reports showing the U.S. wasn’t growing as fast as forecast and as lower prices spurred Asian demand, with coin sales rising from America to Australia. Gold’s best forecasters say the rebound won’t last because higher prices will stifle purchases and the Federal Reserve will continue slowing stimulus as the economy strengthens.

The metal will average $1,165 an ounce in the fourth quarter, down 12 percent from $1,318.60 on Feb. 14, according to the median of nine analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg. Futures traded at $1,314.90 today. Even after gold dropped 32 percent from a record $1,923.70 in September 2011, prices are twice the average of 2006.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-18/danske-bonus-culture-investigated-as-price-fixing-probe-deepens.html

Danish police are looking into how Danske Bank A/S (DANSKE)’s bonus program might have influenced employees now being investigated for alleged bond price manipulation.

The Public Prosecutor for Serious Economic and International Crime, which on Feb. 7 accused Danske, six of its employees and its home-loan unit of rigging mortgage bond prices in 2009, needs to find out what role the prospect of a bigger paycheck played, Public Prosecutor Hans Fogtdal said yesterday in a telephone interview.

“It’s not apparent from the information that we have now that the employees made the transactions for their own benefit,” Fogtdal said. “But we are looking more closely at the bonus program to see whether it has any bearing on this case, whether the employees benefited from it.”

The alleged misdeeds were designed to drive mortgage bond prices higher, making client redemptions more costly, according to the public prosecutor. The trades in question date back to some of the darkest hours of the global financial crisis, after the 2008 failure of Lehman Brothers Holding Inc. sucked liquidity out of most markets. The case raises questions as to how widespread price fixing was, lawmakers said last week.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-18/obama-heads-to-mexico-meeting-with-amigos-strained-by-keystone.html

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s frustration with U.S. President Barack Obama’s failure to approve the Keystone XL pipeline may make this installment of the North America summit, known as the “Three Amigos,” the frostiest since the annual meetings began almost a decade ago.

At the one-day meeting tomorrow in Toluca, Mexico, with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and Harper, Obama is bringing an agenda focused on trade, education, border security and stopping drug trafficking. Yet 20 years after the North American Free Trade Agreement took effect, the U.S. and Canada are at loggerheads over a $5.4 billion collaboration that would carry oil south from the thick sands of Alberta to American refineries along the Gulf Coast of Texas and Louisiana.

“People always call these things the ‘Three Amigos,’ but I would say at this point in time it’s difficult to use that term,” said Duncan Wood, director of the Mexico Institute at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington. “From the Canadian point of view, Keystone is an extremely big issue, and they’ve staked a lot of the relationship with the United States on it. From the U.S. side, you have complex internal politics that need to be resolved.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-17/vw-sticks-to-tennessee-works-council-plan-after-uaw-miss.html

Volkswagen AG (VOW) plans to pursue labor representation at its Tennessee car factory even after employees voted against joining the United Auto Workers union.

The world’s second-largest carmaker intends to organize a works council at the site in Chattanooga, where 53 percent of workers rejected UAW membership in balloting that ended Feb. 14. The employee groups, which are common throughout Volkswagen’s home country of Germany, deal with workplace issues, such as scheduling and safety, and represent staff in disputes with management.

“Our goal continues to be to determine the best method for establishing a works council” in Chattanooga, Frank Fischer, head of VW’s only U.S. factory, said in an e-mail statement following the vote. “We found great enthusiasm for the idea of an American-style works council both inside and outside our plant.”

The UAW’s narrow loss in Chattanooga could force the union to regroup as it seeks to sign up workers at a Daimler AG factory in Alabama and Nissan Motor Co.’s U.S. workforce. The UAW previously failed to convince workers to join the union at Nissan as well as the U.S. factories of Toyota Motor Corp. and Honda Motor Co.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-18/asian-stocks-advance-for-third-day-before-boj-statement.html

Asian stocks rose, with the regional benchmark index poised for a three-week high, after the Bank of Japan maintained unprecedented asset purchases and boosted lending programs. Chinese shares fell as the central bank drained liquidity from the financial system.

Toyota Motor Corp. (7203), the world’s largest carmaker, climbed 2.6 percent in Tokyo as the yen slid. BHP Billiton Ltd., the world’s biggest mining company, rose 2.3 percent in Sydney after first-half profit jumped more than expected. China Minsheng Banking Corp. fell 1.1 percent in Hong Kong, pacing declines among mainland lenders.

The MSCI Asia Pacific Index added 0.9 percent to 137.55 as of 4:33 p.m. in Hong Kong, heading for its highest close since Jan. 24. Global equities erased this year’s losses after Janet Yellen’s first testimony to Congress as head of the Federal Reserve and China’s record lending buoyed optimism in the world’s largest economies.

“The broad market uptrend remains intact,” said Nader Naeimi, Sydney-based head of dynamic asset allocation at AMP Capital, which manages $131 billion. “Japan is in a unique situation as the BOJ continues to add stimulus, while the Fed is beginning to taper. Liquidity tightening in China shouldn’t be a concern as policy makers need to mop up excess liquidity. There’s enough credit available in China to support growth.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-17/china-tackles-1-trillion-data-gap-as-xi-changes-metrics.html

The gap in reported economic output between China’s provinces and national statistics narrowed for the first time in six years as Communist Party leaders vowed to reduce the focus on growth in evaluating local officials.

The combined nominal economic output of the 31 provinces expanded about 9.2 percent in 2013 to 62.9 trillion yuan ($10.4 trillion), according to data reported by local governments since December and compiled by Bloomberg News. That exceeded the national figure by 6.06 trillion yuan, or 10.7 percent, after an 11 percent margin in 2012.

The data suggest regional officials are heeding directives from President Xi Jinping and his team to shift their attention toward more sustainable expansion, including reducing debt and pollution. Still, the excess of the provincial total over the national figure remains more than the size of Indonesia’s economy, pointing to the room for further improvements.

“Regional authorities are showing more realistic data,” said Dariusz Kowalczyk, senior economist and strategist at Credit Agricole CIB in Hong Kong. The numbers “may reflect the change in emphasis in assessment of regional authorities away from growth towards other factors, which reduced the incentive for them to inflate the numbers.”

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-26236593

China's central bank has removed nearly $8bn (£4.7bn) from the money markets in a bid to control the amount of credit in the country's financial system.

According to reports, the People's Bank of China (PBOC) did so by issuing 14-day forward bond repurchase agreements, also known as forward repos.

It is the first time since June the PBOC has used forward repos, and comes after China released unusually strong economic data earlier this year.

Chinese stocks fell in Shanghai.

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/02/18/uk-britain-inflation-idUKBREA1H0FP20140218

(Reuters) - British inflation fell below the Bank of England's target for the first time in over four years last month, reinforcing the bank's message that there is no rush to raise interest rates.

Consumer prices rose 1.9 percent on the year in January, slowing from December's rate of 2.0 percent, making it the smallest increase since November 2009, the Office for National Statistics said.

Economists polled by Reuters had expected it to stay at 2.0 percent, although the lower rate of inflation fitted with the BoE's latest forecasts showing it would dip to around 1.7 percent by March.

"With sterling remaining strong, pushing down import costs, energy and commodity prices remaining well behaved and wage pressures limited, inflation is likely to remain soft for several months," said ING economist James Knightley.

2/18/14 Second JPMorgan Banker Jumps To His Death: Said To Be 33 Year Old Hong Kong FX Trader

The banker suicide wave that started in late January has now become an epidemic, and it seems to be focusing on one bank: JP Morgan. After the first suicide that took place in JPM's London headquarters, ending the life of 39 year old Gabriel Magee, a vice president in the investment bank’s technology department, next it was 37 year old Ryan Crane, an executive director in the firm's program trading division, who died under still unknown circumstances. Moments ago a third JPMorgan banker committed suicide, this time at the JPMorgan Charter House Asia headquarters in central Hong Kong, where a 33 year old man who was said to have been an FX trader for JPM, just jumped to his death.

more...
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-02-18/third-jpmorgan-banker-jumps-his-death-hong-kong-said-be-33-year-old-fx-trader

http://www.nationofchange.org/wars-afghanistan-iraq-cost-us-over-4-trillion-1392732855

In March 2013, the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government issued a report on the costs of America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Presently, these conflicts, which America has been fighting for over a decade, have totaled approximately $2 trillion in war debt.

This figure includes direct outlays for America’s three main military operations:

Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) - The official name for America’s war in Afghanistan.
Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) - The official name for America’s war in Iraq (which some may remember by its original title: Operation Iraqi Liberation, or OIL).
Operation New Dawn (OND) - The official title for America’s war in Iraq under President Obama’s command (2010 to present).
These operations were implemented under the umbrella of America’s Global War on Terror. In 2006, President George W. Bush would tell CNBC that the war on terror was nothing less than “the first counter-attack to World War III.”

That counter-attack, or World War III, continues through the present day, twelve years after the first and only attack on America’s home soil since the turn of the century. In that time, America has financed its $2 trillion war mainly by borrowing from foreign lenders. It has in fact only paid $260 billion of that so far, which is merely the interest accrued on our debt.

http://www.thenation.com/article/178366/why-federal-reserve-needs-overhaul?page=full



This 100-year-old antique is undemocratic, too close to elite banking interests and often blind to the economic conditions that affect most Americans.

DETAILS AT LINK--MUST READ

http://robertreich.org/post/76654089293

America has a serious “We” problem — as in “Why should we pay for them?”

The question is popping up all over the place. It underlies the debate over extending unemployment benefits to the long-term unemployed and providing food stamps to the poor. It’s found in the resistance of some young and healthy people to being required to buy health insurance in order to help pay for people with preexisting health problems. It can be heard among the residents of upscale neighborhoods who don’t want their tax dollars going to the inhabitants of poorer neighborhoods nearby. The pronouns “we” and “they” are the most important of all political words. They demarcate who’s within the sphere of mutual responsibility, and who’s not. Someone within that sphere who’s needy is one of “us” — an extension of our family, friends, community, tribe – and deserving of help. But needy people outside that sphere are “them,” presumed undeserving unless proved otherwise.The central political question faced by any nation or group is where the borders of this sphere of mutual responsibility are drawn. Why in recent years have so many middle-class and wealthy Americans pulled the borders in closer?

The middle-class and wealthy citizens of East Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana, for example, are trying to secede from the school district they now share with poorer residents of town, and set up their own district funded by property taxes from their higher-valued homes. Similar efforts are underway in Memphis, Atlanta, and Dallas. Over the past two years, two wealthy suburbs of Birmingham, Alabama, have left the countywide school system in order to set up their own. Elsewhere, upscale school districts are voting down state plans to raise their taxes in order to provide more money to poor districts, as they did recently in Colorado.

"Why should we pay for them?" is also reverberating in wealthy places like Oakland County, Michigan, that border devastatingly poor places like Detroit.

"Now, all of a sudden, they’re having problems and they want to give part of the responsibility to the suburbs?" says L. Brooks Paterson, the Oakland County executive. “They’re not gonna talk me into being the good guy. ‘Pick up your share?’ Ha ha.”

But had the official boundary been drawn differently so that it encompassed both Oakland County and Detroit – say, to create a Greater Detroit region – the two places would form a “we” whose problems Oakland’s more affluent citizens would have some responsibility to address....


PATTERSON IS PURE SLIME, BY THE WAY. WITH ANY LUCK, HE'LL GO TO PRISON

MORE AT LINK

2/18/14 Capital One says it can show up at cardholders' homes, workplaces

Credit card issuer Capital One isn't shy about getting into customers' faces.
The company recently sent a contract update to cardholders that makes clear it can drop by any time it pleases.
The update specifies that "we may contact you in any manner we choose" and that such contacts can include calls, emails, texts, faxes or a "personal visit."
As if that weren't creepy enough, Cap One says these visits can be "at your home and at your place of employment."
The police need a court order to pull off something like that. But Cap One says it has the right to get up close and personal anytime, anywhere.
"We may modify or suppress caller ID and similar services and identify ourselves on these services in any manner we choose."
Cap One is saying it can trick you into picking up the phone by using what looks like a local number or masquerading as something it's not, such as Save the Puppies or a similarly friendly-seeming bogus organization.

more...
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-lazarus-20140218,1,4405897,full.column#axzz2tgmxlJTi