. . . .

I've just spent three hours trying to figure out how to embed them in the template. If anyone knows how . . . PM me or post here.

I told you I wasn't tech savvy!!!!!

Wish I could help. I wish I still had Ozymandius e-mail. He would probably know.

What widgets?

What fresh hell is this?

I'm glad I got a good night's sleep. Send me the links or whatever, and I'll see what I can do.

By the way, happy Monday.

DJIA




S&P 500




NYSE composite

I'm still looking...anything not-US that you want? It's not come up yet...

NIKKEI



FTSE



I dunno, Tansy, they look lifeless to me....

<iframe frameborder="0" scrolling="no" height="287" width="300" allowtransparency="true" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" src="http://tools.investing.com/market_quotes.php?tab_1=1,2,3,5,7,2186&tab_2=169,166,20,172,27,178&tab_3=8830,8849,8836,8862,8831,8988&tab_4=8880,8907,8900,8899,8886,8895&select_color=000000&default_color=0059B0"> </iframe><br /><div style="width:300"><span style="font-size: 11px;color: #333333;text-decoration: none;">Market Quotes are powered by <a href="http://www.investing.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank" style="font-size: 11px;color: #06529D; font-weight: bold;" class="underline_link">Investing.com</a></span></div>


Once upon a time, I had the template...now I don't.

The template, that is.

I'm running Chrome.

I can provide a link to an interactive widget, but I cannot imbed the widget itself into the template...

http://tools.investing.com/market_quotes.php?

Up until now we've used images. jpgs, gifs, etc.

I've tried a few widgets and they don't display.

But, the links are UUUGLY! :/

May not be usable.

And everybody. Off to work at zero dark thirty.

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-27660594

Manufacturing growth in the eurozone slowed to a six-month low in May, according to a closely-watched survey.

The final Markit's Eurozone Manufacturing Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI) dipped to 52.2 in May, down from 53.4 in April. A figure above 50 indicates expansion.

Output growth in all nations, except the Netherlands, slowed.

It has fuelled expectations that the European Central Bank (ECB) will act to boost growth when it meets on Thursday.

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-27660588

The global airline industry's profit forecast for this year has been cut amid fears over China's economic growth, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) said.

The trade body predicts airlines will make $18bn (£10.7bn) in profit in 2014, lower than its $18.7bn March forecast.

It blamed concerns over the Chinese economy's performance and a slowdown in world trade for the downgrade.

The industry faced "strong headwinds", IATA director general Tony Tyler said.

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-27656152


Spain will unveil a new stimulus package worth 6.3bn euros (£5.1bn; $8.6bn) next week, Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has announced.

He said the main rate of corporate tax would also be cut to 25% from 30%.

The measures are designed specifically to boost the economy's competitiveness and to create jobs.

The Spanish unemployment rate is running at almost 26%, with more than half of the workforce under 24 years of age out of work.

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-27657604

Shoppers are using cash to buy their goods less often than ever before, according to a survey by the British Retail Consortium (BRC).

Online sales and contactless cards are behind the 14% fall in cash use over the past five years, while debit card use has increased by 11%, the BRC said.

The BRC said the survey also showed banks are still levying "unjustifiably" high charges for using cards.

However, the UK Cards Association said the charges were still good value.

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/23998-disposable-futures

The 20th Century is often termed the "Century of Violence." And rightly so, given the widespread devastation of an entire continent during the two Great Wars; the continued plunder and suppression of former colonial enclaves; the rebirth of extermination camps in the progressive heart of a modern Europe; the appalling experiments in human barbarism that decimated Hiroshima and Nagasaki; the torture and symbolic acts of disappearance so endemic in Latin America; the passivity in the face of ongoing acts of genocide; the wars and violence carried out in the name of some deceitful humanitarian principle. This legacy of violence makes it difficult to assess this history without developing profound suspicions about the nature of the human condition and its capacity for evil.

One of the particular novelties of this period was the emergence of dystopia literature and compelling works of art that proved integral to the lasting critique of totalitarian regimes. Indeed, some of the most appealing prose of the times was not put forward by recognized political theorists or radical philosophers, but the likes of Yevgeny Zamyatin, H.G. Wells, George Orwell and Aldus Huxley, among others, who managed to reveal with incisive flair and public appeal the violence so often hidden beneath the utopian promise of technologically driven progress.(1) Dystopia in these discourses embodied a warning and a hope that humankind would address and reverse the dark authoritarian practices that descended on the 20th century like a thick, choking fog.

Hannah Arendt understood how the authoritarian violence of the 20th century needed a broader frame of reference.(2) The gulags, death camps and the torture chambers of Argentina and Chile soon gave way to the harrowing experimental camps of the colonies, which would all too quickly blowback into the metropolitan homelands. The utopian promise of the Enlightenment thus contained within it the violence and brutalities embedded in the logic of instrumental rationality and the unchecked appeal to progress and ideological purity, all of which was later rehearsed within the most terrifying fictions and rewritten with the same devastating effect for those expendable millions that made up a veritable continent of suffering we could rightly map as the globally dispossessed.

We live, however, in a different political moment. The state is no longer the center of politics. Neoliberalism has made a bonfire of the sovereign principles embodied in the social contract. Nor can we simply diagnose 21st century forms of oppression and exploitation by relying on well-rehearsed orthodoxies of our recent past. With power and its modalities of violence having entered into the global space of flows - detached from the controlling political interests of the nation-state, utilizing technologies far beyond those imagined in the most exaggerating of 20th century fictions, the dystopian theorists of yesteryears prove to be of limited use.(3) Hope appears increasingly to have fallen prey to predatory formations of global capitalism and its engulfing webs of precarity that have reduced human life to the task of merely being able to survive. Individual and collective agencies are not only under siege unlike any other time in history, but have become depoliticized, overcome by a culture of anxiety, insecurity, commodification and privatization

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/W/WORLD_MARKETS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-06-02-05-53-44

TOKYO (AP) -- World stock markets mostly rose Monday after China's manufacturing expanded and two Wall Street benchmarks hit record highs.

Gains in Europe were mild and trading in Asia was relatively subdued, with markets closed for holidays in mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and New Zealand.

But sentiment was underpinned by an official survey that showed China's manufacturing expanded for a third month in May, with overall factory activity at its highest level this year. New closing highs for the Dow and S&P 500 on Friday also helped.

As trading got underway in Europe, Germany's DAX rose 0.2 percent to 9,960.78 and Britain's FTSE 100 added 0.3 percent to 6,862.77. France's CAC 40 shed 0.2 percent to 4,512.35.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/M/ML_EGYPT_ECONOMY?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-06-01-13-46-53

CAIRO (AP) -- Egypt's stock market witnessed a sharp plunge Sunday that forced a temporary suspension of trading after reports of a newly proposed government tax on capital gains which experts said was hardly explained to investors.

The half-hour suspension on the first day of the trading week at the Egyptian Exchange failed to cool a frenzy of selling by investors. The EGX30 benchmark index closed 4.22 percent lower, or at 7,894.73 points, continuing its slide after trading was suspended after the broader EGX100 index fell by 5 percent.

Egyptian Finance Minister Hany Kadry Dimian announced the new tax on capital gains Thursday, fuelling the market slide. He said the government will impose a 10-percent tax on net realized portfolio profits at the end of the year. Stock market profits are currently tax-free.

Wael Ziada, the head of research at EFG Hermes, one of the Middle East's largest investment banks, said the proposed law wasn't clearly explained or discussed, causing the "extreme reaction" in the market.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-06-01/the-unstoppable-100-trillion-bond-market-renders-models-useless.html

If the insatiable demand for bonds has upended the models you use to value them, you’re not alone.

Just last month, researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York retooled a gauge of relative yields on Treasuries, casting aside three decades of data that incorporated estimates for market rates from professional forecasters. Priya Misra, the head of U.S. rates strategy at Bank of America Corp., says a risk metric she’s relied on hasn’t worked since March.

After unprecedented stimulus by the Fed and other central banks made many traditional models useless, investors and analysts alike are having to reshape their understanding of cheap and expensive as the global market for bonds balloons to $100 trillion. With the world’s biggest economies struggling to grow and inflation nowhere in sight, catchphrases such as “new neutral” and “no normal” are gaining currency to describe a reality where bonds are rallying the most in a decade.

“The world’s gotten more complicated and it’s a little different,” James Evans, a New York-based money manager at Brown Brothers Harriman & Co., which oversees $30 billion, said in a telephone interview on May 30. “As far as predicting direction up and down, I don’t think they have much value,” referring to bond-market models used by forecasters.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-06-01/bnp-fine-stirs-french-anger-putting-pressure-on-hollande-to-act.html

The French are crying foul.

A potential $10 billion U.S. penalty against France’s largest bank BNP Paribas SA (BNP) for its alleged dealings with Iran and other sanctioned nations, is stirring outrage in the country. It is putting pressure on President Francois Hollande, who hosts Barack Obama this week to mark the 70th anniversary of D-Day, to protect the bank from the American onslaught.

Le Monde in its May 31 edition called the possible fine a “masterful slap.” Le Figaro newspaper said the U.S. was making an example of BNP to deflect criticism it had been “lenient with the American banks responsible for the financial crisis.” Hollande may raise the matter with Obama this week, Les Echos reported today, without citing anyone.

U.S. authorities are seeking to impose the fine to settle allegations that BNP transferred funds for clients in violation of sanctions against Sudan, Iran, and Cuba, according to people familiar with the investigation. The fine could be the largest criminal penalty in the U.S., eclipsing BP Plc’s $4 billion accord with the Justice Department last year.

“If this results in a guilty plea, it is likely to increase debate in France and the rest of Europe about the essential fairness of U.S. criminal procedures,” said Frederick T. Davis, a lawyer at Debevoise & Plimpton LLP in Paris and a former U.S. prosecutor.

I know it's early on a Monday, but this doesn't make much sense...

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-06-02/credit-suisse-needs-u-s-nod-on-pension-work-after-charge.html

The U.S. Labor Department is one regulator that hasn’t immediately fallen into line to give Credit Suisse Group AG (CSGN) a pass following its May 19 guilty plea for helping Americans evade taxes.

Now Credit Suisse needs a waiver from the Labor Department to retain its status as a qualified professional asset manager, or QPAM. Otherwise, it will automatically lose that privilege after its Aug. 12 sentencing. Under pressure from prosecutors, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the Securities and Exchange Commission have already shown the bank some leniency.

The Labor Department, which oversees $7.9 trillion in pensions, “is not a rubber stamp,” said Michael Trupo, a spokesman. “This is a very serious matter, and we are closely monitoring the situation.” Zurich-based Credit Suisse, Switzerland’s second-largest bank, declined to disclose the amount of public and private pension assets that could be affected by the ruling.

At least six large banks have won Labor Department waivers to keep their QPAM designations in the past 15 years, including Switzerland’s largest bank, UBS AG. (UBSN) Credit Suisse’s guilty plea was entered by its main bank unit and reflects a harsher stance by prosecutors, who also are pressing BNP Paribas SA (BNP) to plead guilty in a probe of sanctions violations, a person familiar with the matter has said.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-06-01/draghi-primes-ecb-as-inflation-scarcity-alarms-officials.html

Mario Draghi will confront the threat of deflation this week as he prepares to unleash an array of measures to jolt the economy and ignite prices.

From negative interest rates to conditional liquidity for banks, the European Central Bank president and his colleagues have signaled all options are up for discussion when they meet on June 5. Before then, data tomorrow may reinforce the view that action is needed, with economists predicting a grim mixture of too-low inflation and unemployment near a record.

Draghi has braced investors with warnings on a potential “negative spiral” of prices, and will have new ECB forecasts likely to include a lower outlook for inflation (ECCPEST) and growth. Those projections will inform talks in the next three days with his management team and then in the wider Governing Council as officials determine how radical a response is needed.

“If you look at the broader array of economic data that is currently out there, then pretty much all of it points to the need for further stimulus,” said James Ashley, chief European economist at RBC Capital Markets in London. “We’re looking at conventional and unconventional steps.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-06-01/thai-army-shuts-part-of-bangkok-train-network-to-combat-protests.html

Thailand’s junta deployed thousands of soldiers in central Bangkok yesterday to counter small protests from groups opposed to the May 22 coup, two days after its leader General Prayuth Chan-Ocha called for unity.

The military blocked roads and suspended train services in Bangkok’s Ratchaprasong shopping district, forcing protesters to move a rally to a nearby retail mall on Sukhumvit Road, one of the capital’s most popular tourist areas.

Hundreds of demonstrators stood on an elevated walkway outside the Terminal 21 mall, shouting ‘Democracy’ in English and Thai and holding signs saying ‘Junta, get out’ and ‘No coup’. Soldiers played patriotic songs from their vehicles, and later closed the mall and a train station linked to the building. Normal rail service was restored at 3:30 p.m. local time, the operator announced on its official Twitter feed.

Coup leader Prayuth said May 30 that martial law gives the military “total control to stop the ongoing violence” and said a nationwide curfew will remain in place until law and order is restored. It may take at least a year to return Thailand to civilian rule because an interim administration will need time to implement electoral reforms and unify the country, he said in a nationally televised address.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-06-01/china-trades-barbs-with-u-s-japan-on-island-tensions-at-forum.html

Rebuffing criticism from the U.S. and Japan, China sent a clear message at an international security meeting that it will press ahead with territorial claims that have caused friction with Japan and smaller neighbors.

After U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel described China’s actions in the South China Sea as destabilizing and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Japan did not welcome dangerous encounters by jets or warships, Chinese Lieutenant General Wang Guanzhong broke from prepared remarks to call their speeches “unimaginable.” The leaders were at the annual Shangri-La security dialogue in Singapore last weekend.

The forum highlighted the growing pains in Asia as China emerges as a military and economic power, challenging decades of U.S. dominance. Even as Chinese officials spoke of their desire to play a cooperative role in the region, Wang, the deputy chief of general staff of the People’s Liberation Army, said Hagel’s speech was “full of hegemony, full of words of threat and intimidation,” and Abe’s speech was understood to have targeted China without mentioning the nation by name.

“China will seek to spin both Hagel’s and Abe’s remarks in a negative, provocative way,” said Rory Medcalf, Director of the International Security Program at the Lowy Institute for International Policy in Sydney. “The public diplomacy of all the key stakeholders in Asian security has become starker in the past two years. In some instances, it is descending to the level of a propaganda war.”

http://elpais.com/elpais/2014/06/02/inenglish/1401699497_947043.html


Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy called a surprise press conference on Monday morning to announce that King Juan Carlos has decided to abdicate in favor of his son Felipe.

The 76-year-old monarch will appear later on Monday to personally explain his decision, said Rajoy in a brief address.

“I have found the king convinced that this is the best moment for a change in the leadership of state with complete normalcy,” said Rajoy in a historical statement that had created great expectation in the media.

Juan Carlos’ son, who is 46, will reign as Felipe VI.

http://www.businessinsider.com/german-inflation-2014-6

There's lots of evidence this morning that the German economy isn't looking so hot. Earlier we mentioned how the country's manufacturing industry has fallen to a 7-month low.

Now it's seeing outright deflation in several regions, with prices falling on a sequential basis.

The numbers are causing the Euro to tumble this morning, as this only puts more pressure on the ECB to ease policy this week (something which was already likely in the cards).



Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/german-inflation-2014-6#ixzz33TvQunrY

The audio didn't seem to have been recorded on scene, but it definitely did match well.

Various orchestras and choirs perform their music for the enjoyment of unsuspecting people.
Youtube has videos of many of them.

But this one appeared to have the audio pre-recorded, or the video was edited to match a recording. There wasn't a lot of background noise that you'd expect in an outdoor setting, and the music just sounded really, really clear, like a studio recording.

http://www.businessinsider.com/inequality-has-become-the-achilles-heel-of-democracy-2014-6

Break-up of the peaceful co-existence
During the past 40 years the relationship between democracy and capitalism has radically changed. What Karl Polanyi called socially “embedded capitalism” became “neoliberalism”, “deregulation”, “globalisation” and “financialisation”.

The increasing “denationalisation” of the economy and of political decision-making has progressively weakened the power of democratic elected parliaments in favour of governments and deregulated globalised markets.

MPs play second fiddle to powerful financial CEOs and more often than not to only scarcely legitimated and monitored supranational bodies such as the World Trade Organisation, the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank. This power shift accelerated the increase of socioeconomic inequalities within OECD countries.

The absent voters
Alongside this trend, established democracies have witnessed a steady worrying decline of electoral participation. In the US, on average, less than 50% of voters turn out on election day. Only countries with obligatory voting – such as Australia – have proven to be more resilient against this trend.

The problem, however, is not so much low turnout, but the social selectivity that it implies. The lower the turnout is, the higher the social exclusion. Evidences show that the voters at the lower economic end of the social spectrum are the ones deserting the polls.



Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/inequality-has-become-the-achilles-heel-of-democracy-2014-6#ixzz33TyjN9RS

I think Jim Hightower or Molly Ivins said that.

via google

global monopolies swell: where's the backlash?

http://www.nationofchange.org/global-monopolies-swell-where-s-backlash-1401624890

Considering the freewheeling surge of monopoly systems – beyond big business grabs to geo-political hegemony and government intrusions, plus technology, resource and media dominance – why isn’t this historic escalation on more political radars? What burgeoning powerhouse isn’t getting too big for its britches, too big to fail, too big even to derail? By “monopoly systems,” I identify autocratic, controlling enterprises run by non-transparent super-elites. If I were prone to conspiracy thinking, I’d posit that some secret oligarchic club has hypnotized our savviest gadflies from framing all the convergences.

Perhaps that’s because we focus more on symptoms than causes. To understand global phenomena – not just growing income inequality, booming billionaires and record stock prices, but also climate change and international tensions – study the first step in world’s industrial production line: mastery of resources, like oil, land, water and raw minerals. The rich get richer because the big are getting bigger. Despite the middle-class collapse, and huge disruptive fiascos, where are significant corporate bankruptcies since ’08? Not BP, despite forking over up to $80 billion in fines and penalties. Not News Corp., despite its self-mortifying, criminal media scandal. Not banksters paying record criminal penalties.

Thus with hegemony: with only small fry competition in the Americas, the USA early on established supremacy. Then, riding the Monroe Doctrine, we went on an imperial buying spree, absorbing the southwest with a trumped up Mexican invasion. Yes, 10K Yankee soldiers invaded Mexico City as manifest destiny anointed California, Arizona, New Mexico and Nevada the next American prizes. Bingo, the Gold Rush, setting off torrential exploitation to this day for every mineable western treasure. For two centuries, “drill, baby, drill” was the non-controversial order of western business.

The Reigns of Power

On tap China rapidly wakes up to consolidate massive regional power, scooping up key global resources (oil, copper, coal, and everything moveable) to fuel its industrial, military and surveillance prowess. Asia will never be the same as tensions with Japan and Taiwan increase (one empire up, others down). Likewise, one ex-heavyweight contender makes a comeback as the Russian empire flexes what's left of its economic and diplomatic muscle. South of our borders Brazil and Argentina expand as economic powerhouses, and South America will never be the same. Watch out for India, bouncing off a weak spell, but uplifted with a new growth-friendly election. This batting order sets up the next century.

Like a drunk looking for his car keys under the streetlight, because the light is better there....


Nobody expects the French Revolution...or the Bolshevik, or the American...

http://money.msn.com/retirement/article.aspx?post=031b9b88-0ebb-43aa-8451-682215c4df27

Recession behind them, boomers retire in droves

Many baby boomers put off their retirement plans because of the ravages of the Great Recession. Now they're feeling more confident about quitting work.

------------

The article is so sweet, complete BS, but a really nice sweet piece of MSM fodder.

50 Shades of gray...if you are out of the work force after 50, in this recovery, consider yourself retired.

retired, watched Wall St. destroy her cushy retirement TWICE, and is now clerking at a drugstore.