but check back later...

Western Banks Scramble As China's "Rehypothecation Evaporation" Goes Global

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-06-07/western-banks-scramble-chinas-rehypothecation-evaporation-goes-global

apologies is this has been posted..since it happened Friday, I wasn't sure.

Max Keiser was warning of this over a year ago.

Rehypothecation is a shell game. Without any regulation, we will all be taken to the cleaners by the banksters seeking their pound of flesh.

last week or the week before.
What a .......co-incidence.

Spinning off sidelines and unprofitable lines. Silly me. As if they would do anything like that, cutting down on their avenues for theft...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2014/02/24/25-maps-and-charts-that-explain-america-today/

Who’s most well off

Where the millionaires are: Per capita millionaire households (Source: Phoenix Global Wealth Monitor)







SO MUCH MORE AT LINK

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/05/bofa-in-talks-to-pay-at-l_n_5455703.html?utm_hp_ref=business&ir=Business

Bank of America Corp. is in talks to pay at least $12 billion to settle probes by the Justice Department and a number of states into the bank's alleged handling of shoddy mortgages, according to people familiar with the negotiations.

BofA in Talks to Pay At Least $12 Billion to Settle Probes
At Least $5 Billion Expected to Go to Consumer Relief
By Devlin Barrett, Dan Fitzpatrick and Christina Rexrode

http://online.wsj.com/news/article_email/bofa-in-talks-to-pay-at-least-12-billion-to-settle-probes-1402006948-lMyQjAxMTA0MDAwNTEwNDUyWj

http://www.alternet.org/environment/are-bomb-trains-rolling-through-your-neighborhood-check-interactive-map?akid=11870.227380.nEYu6u&rd=1&src=newsletter998769&t=16





A new interactive map released this week by Oil Change International highlights the alarming dangers of oil-by-rail to the nation's communities — and the map does not paint a pretty landscape.

As the report points out, oil-by-rail is booming in both the literal and figurative sense. Seventy times as much oil-by-rail was moved last year compared to 2005, which was the very beginning of the hydraulic fracturing movement. Since that time, there have been several explosions and spills that have devastated towns and destroyed rivers.

The project's authors say that the oil industry is "out of control" and that regulators are unable to keep up with the industry’s rapid expansion. Because of this, public safety is disregarded in favor of fossil-fuel industry profits.

The report, Runaway Train: The Reckless Expansion of Crude By Rail in North America tracks crude oil shipments as they move across the U.S. It says that some one million barrels of oil are shipped across the country on any given day, with about 135 trains of 100 or more tankers each carrying the crude. Industry analysts predict that the amount of oil-by-rail will expand by as much as five times over the next decade to match North American crude output. Oil-by-rail shipments through densely populated areas including suburban New York, Philadelphia, New Orleans, Albany, NY, Minneapolis, Chicago, Cleveland and Buffalo, are expected to increase significantly.
Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corporation (BNSF), owned by billionaire Warren Buffet, carries up to 70 percent of all the crude-by-rail traffic in North America. This railroad network alone expects to load one million barrels per day onto its network by the end of 2014. One of its trains derailed and exploded near Casselton, North Dakota, spilling more than 400,000 gallons.

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/05X-_1TWXSbOP6LwOMZirI5asg3DnCmy55ilrjXjcWIzUiR6BKU48NowzqipfHGUq45myApgMP-JSrvia3x6jQ6Gb7-MwXU6ioCjRmeAX8CBaIJ_eD1aXkM21PZCCnIDuA

MORE

This is a better link, you can zoom in and out, and move the map around
http://priceofoil.org/rail-map/

http://www.alternet.org/economy/marriage-becoming-luxury-rich?akid=11879.227380.eks2H1&rd=1&src=newsletter999606&t=2

Carbone and Cahn’s research reveals a different story: one in which growing inequality, economic insecurity and policy decisions combine to make marriage a risky bargain for people struggling to make ends meet. The following is an excerpt from Marriage Markets: How Inequality is Remaking the American Family, reprinted with permission from Oxford University Press.

The American family is changing—and the changes guarantee that inequality will be greater in the next generation. For the first time, America’s children will almost certainly not be as well educated, healthy, or wealthy as their parents, and the result stems from the growing disconnect between the resources available to adults and those invested in children. The time to address the real explanation for the changing American family is now.

The changes themselves, of course, have been the subject of endless commentary, both positive and negative. The age of marriage is going up, the rate of marriage is falling, and almost half of all marriages fail. An increasing number of states allow women to marry women, and men to marry men. The number of children born outside of marriage is drawing equal with the number of children born within marriage. And the percentage of children growing up in single-parent households is the highest in the developed world. These changes, however, do not affect everyone equally. Describing how the “average” family has changed hides what is really going on: economic inequality is remaking the American family along class lines, and families are not going through the same changes together. To understand what is happening to the American family—and how family law locks in the growing class divisions—requires examining the links between family change along the continuum from the top to the bottom of the American economy.

In the process, many of the existing explanations for why the American family today is so radically different from the American family of 50 years ago will prove hollow. The right blames declining moral values, the pill, welfare as we knew it, the rise of “soulmate” marriage, and a host of other social ills without providing a convincing explanation of why these changes affect one group more than another. The left celebrates individual choice, sexual liberation, and women’s equality without acknowledging that not all sources of change are benign and that the consequences of some of the changes they support contribute to the growing inequality they oppose. Neither group provides a complete explanation of these changes, and without a better explanation of why the top and bottom of American families are moving in opposite directions, efforts at family reform will remain futile.

A complete explanation of family change requires taking seriously the role of class in scripting our lives as well as the effect of greater economic inequality in remaking the terms of marriage, divorce and childrearing. Such an explanation needs to address not just why marriage has disappeared from the poorest communities, but also why, in a reversal of historical trends, elite women have become the most likely to marry. It requires the ability to explain why divorce rates, which for decades moved in the same direction for the country as a whole, are now diverging, falling back to the levels that existed before no fault divorce for the most educated while continuing to rise for everyone else. A comprehensive analysis must also be able to make sense of the decisions of working-class women, who often describe themselves as religious or conservative, to have children on their own even when the fathers of their children are willing to propose...MORE

ALL THE TELEPHONE BOOKS IN THE NATION, PERHAPS?

http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/glenn-greenwald-publish-names-americans-nsa-spied?akid=11860.227380.asm5ib&rd=1&src=newsletter997565&t=17





Those who have grown apathetic about the National Security Agency violating privacy rights, may soon find their interest renewed, as the political is about to get very personal. According to The Sunday Times of London, Glenn Greenwald will publish the names of Americans targeted by the NSA.

“One of the big questions when it comes to domestic spying is, ‘Who have been the NSA’s specific targets?’” he told the Times. “Are they political critics and dissidents and activists? Are they genuinely people we’d regard as terrorists? What are the metrics and calculations that go into choosing those targets and what is done with the surveillance that is conducted? Those are the kinds of questions that I want to still answer.”

Greenwald has promised that this will be the “biggest” revelation of the nearly two million classified files he received from Edward Snowden, and that “Snowden’s legacy would be ‘shaped in large part’ by this ‘finishing piece’ still to come.” In a May interview with GQ, Greenwald spoke of this “finale:”

"I think we will end the big stories in about three months or so June or July 2014. I like to think of it as a fireworks show: You want to save your best for last. There's a story that from the beginning I thought would be our biggest, and I'm saving that. The last one is the one where the sky is all covered in spectacular multicolored hues. This will be the finale, a big missing piece. Snowden knows about it and is excited about it."

Greenwald told the Times that the names will be published on The Intercept, the website he established following his departure from The Guardian.

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/

Have at it, Weekenders! Make me proud!

(This is an almost intelliigible transcript from a radio broadcast... re. Bildeberger debates... see link).

... The European banking is a remnant of this feudal society in which private interests are still fought by the ancient Venetian cartels or by the Lombard League, which went down in the Dark Ages, in the 14th century when we had the first big financial collapse in 1345.

The bubble which is about to burst is much bigger than the 1345 bubble, which destroyed most of Europe, killed half of the population as a result of the bubonic plague. And what we are seeing right now is something far worse.

And needless to say that monetary crisis we are seeing right now on the world stage, it is the reflection of the insanity imposed upon a process of destroying the physical economy of the world, because, again, the idea is that progress and development is directly proportional to population density.

So, you have technology, you have progress, you have wealth and you are going to have more people on the planet. And if you are the elite, you don’t need more people, you don’t need 10-20 or 30 billion people, because there is not enough food and water for everybody.

If you are the elite, the 1% of the world, you need to destroy the population or reduce it. And the way to do it is destroying the world’s economy. And Detroit is a great example of this destruction. This is the poster child for the world economy.

We are seeing the same in Latin America, we are seeing the same in Ukraine, we are seeing the same in Thailand, and we saw the same back in the 1990’es when they split up the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. So, again, what we are seeing right now in the world stage, and Ukraine is just a symptom of this, is just another piece, it is not the end game, the end game is Russia and until you destroy all the systems around it and you can actually send Russia to hell in handbasket, in order to be able to control the nation...

/... Read more: http://voiceofrussia.com/radio_broadcast/25298789/273170036/

They can't survive, or keep their current economic standing and prestige with current population levels.

Their solution? Kill us all off. I'm serious. Will expand a little more tomorrow. I just got back from the comedy club, and am slightly intoxicated, but........

I can see the useless Eaters, the 1%, with

• no engineers (because that would mean work, study, innovation, CREATIVITY),
  
  
• no technicians (they work with their hands, and brains)
  
  
• no medical personnel (ditto, ditto, ditto)
  
  
• no farmers (duh)
  
  
• no sanitation workers, water quality workers, roads, airports, electrical grid, solar power replacement parts, plumbers, electricians, drywall installers
  
  
• no factories, hence, no medicine, new shiny toys, or toilet paper.

They would inherit the earth, and learn to become meek.

The more of the 99% they eliminate, the more obvious it becomes who they are...the more easily we will pick them off.


It is a sign of how dumb they are, to think that

1. Life revolves around them
   
2. They can go it alone
   
3. they can enslave people who are demonstrably smarter to do their slave labor

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_JOB_MARKET_THEN_AND_NOW?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-06-07-03-11-12

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The U.S. economy has finally regained the jobs lost to the Great Recession. But go easy on the hallelujahs. The comeback is far from complete.

Friday's report from the government revealed an economy healing yet marked by deep and lasting scars. The downturn that began 6 1/2 years ago accelerated wrenching changes that have left many Americans feeling worse off than they did the last time the economy had roughly the same number of jobs it does now.

Employers added 217,000 workers in May, more than enough to surpass the 138.4 million jobs that existed when the recession began in December 2007. But even as the unemployment rate has slipped to 6.3 percent from 10 percent at the depth of the recession, the economy still lacks its former firepower.

To many economists, the job figures are both proof of the sustained recovery and evidence of a painful transformation in how Americans earn a living.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_JOB_MARKET_GLANCE?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-06-07-03-13-59

FEWER WORKING OR SEEKING WORK

The economic storms of the past several years have driven many people to the sidelines. Just 62.8 percent of those 16 and older are part of the workforce, which includes people who either have a job or are looking for one. That's down from 66 percent in December 2007 and is the lowest level in 35 years.

Economists estimate that about half the decline is related to demographics: The leading edge of the baby boom generation has started to retire, a trend that will likely intensify in coming years. And Americans 24 and younger are more likely to be in school than they were 6 1/2 years ago.

But much of the exodus has occurred because more Americans have become discouraged about their job prospects and have stopped looking. The government doesn't count people as unemployed if they aren't actively looking for work. Nearly 700,000 people were classified by the government as "discouraged" in May. That's far below the 1.3 million peak in December 2010. But it's still about twice the total when the recession began.

WHITHER THE PRIME-AGE WORKERS?

Economists are worried about an exodus among those ages 25-54. Those are prime working years, when employees typically start to reap the wage gains that come from greater skills and experience.

Yet the percentage of those ages 25 to 54 in the workforce fell to 80.8 percent in May, down from 83.1 percent in December 2007. In October, the figure fell to 80.6 percent, the lowest since 1984, when women began entering the workforce in greater numbers.

The biggest drivers of the decline, according to researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta: A jump in the number of people receiving government disability aid and an increase in those who have left the workforce for schooling or training.

WHEN WILL THEY RETURN?:

All this matters because it sets up a big question for the economy and the Federal Reserve: How many of those people will resume their job searches as the economy strengthens?

If many people flood back, it would likely keep wages low. But if most don't resume looking for work, pay could climb because of a shortage of qualified job-seekers. If sustained, widespread pay raises could fan inflation. That could eventually force the Fed to raise interest rates to prevent an inflationary spiral.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_SEC_DARK_POOL_SETTLEMENT?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-06-06-17-09-17

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A brokerage firm that operates a so-called "dark pool" trading system has agreed to pay $2 million to settle federal civil charges of using customers' confidential trading data to market its services.

The settlement between Liquidnet Inc. and the Securities and Exchange Commission was announced Friday, a day after SEC Chair Mary Jo White proposed new rules that could bring closer oversight of high-speed trading and dark trading pools, which account for as much as 35 percent of trades.

Unlike public stock exchanges, dark pools are private, off-market platforms that offer limited information about participants or operations.

The SEC said that Liquidnet improperly gave access to confidential trading information to a brokerage unit outside its dark pool from 2009 to late 2011.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-06-04/welcome-to-baku-the-fiercely-modern-millennia-old-capitalist-socialist-filthy-rich-capital-of-azerbaijan.html

Welcome to Baku, the Fiercely Modern, Millennia-Old, Capitalist-Socialist, Filthy-Rich Capital of Azerbaijan

Baku's newly opened Fairmont Hotel occupies one of three flame-shaped skyscrapers whose curved facades, come nightfall, transform into giant video screens depicting blazing fires. From the 27th floor, there’s a lovely view of the Azerbaijani capital and its crescent-shaped bay in the Caspian Sea. One evening, an employee joins me at a window near the elevator and directs my gaze to a 162-meter pole topped witha national flag the size of two tennis courts. With evident pride, she tells me it’s the tallest flagpole in the world. In 2010, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev marked its unveiling with an elaborate ceremony featuring scores of goose-stepping soldiers.

The catch: Less than a year later, Tajikistan, another oil-rich ex–Soviet republic, unveiled its own record-breaking flagpole, 3 meters (10 feet) taller than Azerbaijan’s. For some reason -- likely related to this country’s notoriously tight control of its media -- word of Tajikistan’s one-upmanship hasn’t spread. My window mate isn’t the first to claim this record for her country, and she won’t be the last.

No matter. Baku has already moved on to bigger, better and more expensive and eye-catching trophies, as Bloomberg Pursuits reports in its Summer 2014 issue. Among them are a radically undulating arts center designed by Baghdad-born starchitect Zaha Hadid; a $640 million soccer stadium that will serve as the main arena for next year’s inaugural European Games; and, still on the drawing board, an archipelago of 50 fake islands with deluxe apartments for at least 400,000 people.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-06-06/gross-says-u-s-job-growth-remains-stuck-in-new-normal-scenario.html

Pacific Investment Management Co.’s Bill Gross, manager of the world’s biggest bond fund, said the pace of jobs gains last month remains in line with “new normal” growth that is below historic averages.

The payroll data “certainly explains the ‘new normal’ in terms of a 2 to 3 percent real growth rate,” Gross said in a radio interview on “Bloomberg Surveillance” with Tom Keene and Mike McKee. “The ‘new neutral’ is still up for grabs in terms of what it is and what it is going to be.”

Employers added 217,000 jobs in May to push U.S. payrolls past their pre-recession peak and the jobless rate held at an almost six-year low of 6.3 percent as the economy gained traction, figures from the Labor Department showed. May marked the fourth straight month payrolls have increased at least 200,000, the first time that’s happened since September 1999 to January 2000.

Pimco, which popularized the term “new normal” to describe an era of below-average economic growth following the financial crisis, has said this quarter that the period is gradually entering a new phase. Economic growth globally will be converging toward lower, yet more stable top speeds and central bank interest rates will remain stuck below their pre-crisis equilibrium in a “new neutral,” which will include a long term Federal Reserve neutral policy rate of 2 percent in nominal terms and zero percent when adjusted for inflation.

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-06-06/sec-caught-dark-pool-and-high-speed-traders-doing-bad-stuff

I've said this before, but I really admire the way the Securities and Exchange Commission has responded to the recent uproar about high-frequency trading. A lesser regulator would have jumped on the bandwagon of HFT bashing, or even tried to get out ahead of it with its own anti-HFT branding.

The SEC, on the other hand, basically thinks high-frequency trading is fine, but it knows you don't think that, and it wants to be tactful. It could just explain that markets aren't rigged, but "markets are rigged" is sort of unfalsifiable. If the SEC says that the stock market is not a giant conspiracy to steal your money, that just means that it's in on the conspiracy.

So the SEC instead talks a lot about how it's going to fix the bits of markets that don't work quite right, and it does targeted enforcement against all the buzzwordy nemeses of fair markets. And it stage manages all of it carefully: After Mary Jo White's big market structure speech yesterday, the SEC today announced two market-structure enforcement actions, one against a dark pool and the other against a company that gave high-frequency traders access to the markets. The boxes, they are checked.

The dark pool, Liquidnet, agreed to pay a $2 million dollar fine for illicitly sharing its customer order data. That's bad! One of the main market-structure conspiracy theories is that dark pools -- which are supposed to be places where institutions can go and post big orders without anyone ever seeing them -- are actually secretly selling institutional order flow to high-frequency traders. So catching a dark pool in the act is a pretty big story for the SEC.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-06-06/morgan-stanley-is-said-to-cut-london-fixed-income-traders.html

Morgan Stanley (MS) eliminated fixed-income trading jobs in London, New York and Toronto this week because of tough market conditions, people with knowledge of the plan said.

The dismissals focused on traders in foreign exchange and interest rates, the people said, asking not to be identified as the details are private. The cuts were made starting June 3, two of the people said. Hugh Fraser, a spokesman for Morgan Stanley in London, declined to comment.

The biggest trading banks have warned investors about a slump in fixed-income trading activity this quarter amid low volatility. That threatens Morgan Stanley’s quest to boost the return on equity of its fixed-income business to 10 percent.

The cuts included closing the interest-rates trading desk in Toronto, according to three of the people. The desk consisted of four employees, said one of the people. The Toronto desk was started in 2012, when the rates business was run by Glenn Hadden, a Canadian who left the bank earlier this year.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-06-06/argentina-returning-to-local-bond-market-after-five-year-absence.html

Argentina is completing its first local bond sale in five years as part of its efforts to return to global credit markets.

The government is offering 4.4 billion pesos ($542 million) of three-year bonds today with yields tied to the benchmark Badlar rate plus 2 percentage points, or a total of about 26 percent. The Treasury issued 5.5 billion pesos of the 2017 notes in March, its first sale in local markets since 2009.

By tapping the local market, President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner’s government is reducing its dependence on state agencies and the central bank to finance its deficit, while helping the monetary authority drain liquidity from the economy. Argentina is mending relations with international creditors, compensating Repsol SA for the takeover of YPF SA and paying the Paris Club, as it seeks to regain access to international financing.

“Since the default, investors were always more willing to lend to the central bank, but now the market is assigning the Treasury a similar risk,” said Aldo Pignanelli, a former central bank president who now runs research firm Saver in Buenos Aires. “It’s another step toward normalization.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-06-06/hedge-funds-betting-on-calm-as-volatility-shorts-increase.html


Hedge funds are betting the stock-market tranquility that’s stifling trading and hurting bank profits will be around for a while.

Large speculators have added bets on lower volatility and were net short almost 82,000 contracts on VIX futures last month, the most since October, according to data from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. The strategy will be profitable should the Chicago Board Options Exchange Volatility Index (VIX) continue its 15 percent retreat this year.

The flood of economic stimulus from global central banks is helping diminish stock-price swings, encouraging investors to trade less and pushing the VIX within three points of an all-time low. Stocks rallied and the volatility gauge fell yesterday after the European Central Bank became the first major central bank to take one of its main rates negative.

“Volatility can go even lower than it already is,” Max Breier, a senior equity-derivatives trader at BMO Capital Markets Corp. in New York, said by phone. “The Fed is still buying assets and there’s still a lot of money sloshing around the system and the rest of the world is now in an easing cycle.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-06-06/bofa-mortgage-case-talks-said-to-include-consumer-relief.html


Bank of America Corp., in talks to resolve probes into its handling of mortgages ahead of the financial crisis, would provide at least $5 billion in relief to consumers as part of a proposed settlement, a person familiar with the talks said.

U.S. prosecutors have been seeking more than $13 billion from the firm to resolve federal and state investigations into its sales of mortgage-backed securities, people with knowledge of the situation told Bloomberg News in April.

The Wall Street Journal reported the consumer relief earlier today. The portion used for relief would help homeowners reduce principal debts, cut monthly payments and pay for blight removal in struggling neighborhoods, the newspaper wrote.

Peter Carr, a Justice Department spokesman, declined to comment.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-06-05/lawsky-said-to-seek-bnp-executive-dismissals-in-probe.html

New York’s top banking regulator Benjamin Lawsky is pressing BNP Paribas SA (BNP) to dismiss one of its top executives as part of settlement negotiations with the U.S. over alleged sanctions violations, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Lawsky wants the bank to remove Chief Operating Officer Georges Chodron de Courcel, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the discussions are private. Lawsky is also seeking the departure of another senior executive and about 12 other bank employees, the person added. Chodron de Courcel and the others haven’t been accused of wrongdoing.

“If the bank acknowledges a fault, someone should take responsibility and leave,” said Francois Chaulet, who helps manage 400 million euros ($546 million) at Montsegur Finance in Paris, including BNP shares.

U.S. authorities are said to be seeking as much as $10 billion -- a record criminal penalty -- over BNP’s dealings in sanctioned countries including Sudan and Iran. Lawsky has said that individuals, not just companies, must be held accountable to deter future wrongdoing. He also wants to suspend BNP’s dollar-clearing operations in New York, which has become a sticking point in the negotiations, a person familiar with the matter has said.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-06-06/draghi-s-resilient-euro-recalls-greenspan-conundrum.html

Then-U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan called it a conundrum a decade ago when he boosted interest rates only to see bond yields fall. European Central Bank President Mario Draghi is facing a similar puzzle with the euro.

Rather than retreat from the 18-nation euro, traders scooped it up yesterday after Draghi unveiled unprecedented monetary-stimulus measures including negative deposit rates that should tend to weaken a currency. Traders speculate the moves are likely to boost the region’s bond and stock markets, bolstering their appeal and the currency needed to buy them.

“The magnitude and multi-faceted nature of the stimulus suggests that the ECB’s main goal here is to take a chainsaw to the euro, but the markets are just laughing at Draghi’s slasher mask,” Guy LeBas, the chief fixed-income strategist at Janney Montgomery Scott LLC in Philadelphia, said in a note to clients yesterday after the ECB’s decision.

Draghi is counting on a lower euro to help ward off deflation and aid exporters. He stepped up his war of words against the currency’s strength in recent months, culminating in May 8 comments that gains in the euro, which that day reached its highest level in 2 1/2 years against the dollar, were hurting policy makers’ efforts to spur inflation.

http://elpais.com/elpais/2014/06/05/inenglish/1401964788_858179.html

On May 14, Janet Ortiz, who runs a cattle farm in an area known as Las Merindades, in Burgos, northern Spain, received a letter from a law firm advising her to sell her 3.5-hectare holding or face the risk of it being “forcibly expropriated.” She contacted the law firm, and was told that it represented BNK Petroleum, a US hydrocarbons company that wants to extract gas in the area via fracking, a method that involves forcing water and air into underground shale deposits to extract gas trapped there. The practice has met with widespread opposition in much of Europe, as well as among Ortiz’s neighbors.

Ortiz posted the letter on the social networks, and it was soon being discussed throughout Las Merindades, an area rich in hydrocarbons, which has been explored for the last century: Spain’s only onshore oil well is located at Ayoluengo, 60 kilometers from Ortiz’s home, and has been producing since 1964.

Ortiz’s strategy of bringing the threat of fracking out in the open put BNK on the back foot, which was obliged, through its law firm, to apologize for threatening to expropriate her land. But local people are now very wary. “Janet’s letter has got us all worried,” says Pepe Casado, a local councilor and member of a local action group set up to prevent fracking in Las Merindades: “We know the wolf is at the door.” The local council, run by the Popular Party, has been forced to declare Las Merindades a non-fracking zone, even though the move has no legal validity.

https://www.commondreams.org/view/2014/06/06-6

If the sharing economy movement is to play a role in shifting society away from the dominant economic paradigm, it will have to get political. And this means guarding against the co-optation of sharing by the corporate sector, while joining forces with a much larger body of activists that have long been calling - either explicitly or implicitly - for more transformative and fundamental forms of economic sharing across the world.

With public interest in the sharing economy on the rise, a polarisation of views on its potential benefits and drawbacks is fast becoming apparent. Much of the mainstream media continues to focus on the ability of the sharing economy to generate wealth and create new billionaires, while some social entrepreneurs and progressives claim that interpersonal sharing is the solution to the world’s most intractable problems. At the same time, a growing number of analysts are concerned that the sharing economy could enable businesses to evade regulations and even break the law. These increasingly conflicting views reflect the diverse interests of the many individuals, organisations and businesses engaged in what is essentially an emerging movement for sharing that has yet to clarify its purpose.

To add a further layer of confusion to the debate, there is little agreement on what the sharing economy actually is. For example, Rachel Botsman - a leading proponent of the ‘what’s mine is yours’ philosophy - argues that the sharing economy forms part of a much wider collaborative economy that leverages technology and trust to facilitate a more efficient distribution of goods and services. A broader definition has been put forward by The People Who Share, who regard the sharing economy as an “alternative socio-economic system which embeds sharing and collaboration at its heart – across all aspects of social and economic life”. Friends of the Earth have also significantly expanded the discourse on sharing to include the political sphere, albeit focussing on city-wide sharing as a means for improving environmental sustainability and equity among citizens.

All of these existing definitions still pay insufficient attention to national and global forms of economic sharing, particularly those facilitated by democratically elected governments. Instead, the focus generally remains limited to individual (peer-to-peer) and local sharing initiatives. Apart from those advocating for localised forms of sharing to be replicated in cities across the world, rarely is the sharing economy discussed in terms of systems of sharing and redistribution that operate on a nationwide or global scale, or in relation to calls for governments to institute the more transformative forms of economic sharing that are possible today.

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-27731567


The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has warned the government that accelerating house prices and low productivity pose the greatest threat to the UK's economic recovery.

It said rising property values could leave households more vulnerable to income and interest rate shocks.

It also called on the Bank of England to enact policy measures "early and gradually" to avoid a housing bubble.

In April, the IMF said the UK economy would grow by 2.9% in 2014.

Early life and career



Bharara was born in 1968 in Ferozepur, Punjab, India, to a Sikh father and Hindu mother. He grew up in Eatontown in suburban Monmouth County, New Jersey and attended Ranney School in Tinton Falls, New Jersey, where he graduated as valedictorian in 1986. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College in 1990 and Columbia Law School in 1993, where he was a member of the Columbia Law Review.

Bharara served as the chief counsel to Senator Chuck Schumer and played a leading role in the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary investigation into the firings of United States attorneys. He was assistant United States Attorney in Manhattan for five years, bringing criminal cases against the bosses of the Gambino and Colombo crime family and Asian gangs in New York City.

United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York

Bharara was nominated to become U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York by President Barack Obama on May 15, 2009 and unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate. He was sworn into the position on August 13, 2009.

In regards to the role of the prosecutor and the correct attitude of the prosecutor, Mr. Bharara will ask all applicants to his office, "How are you going to feel knowing that every day in your job, by definition of you doing your job correctly on the criminal side, you will basically be the proximate cause for, and responsible for, another human being losing his or her liberty for periods of time?" He continues, "From time to time, you get an applicant that is a little bit excited about that prospect. And takes some joy in that prospect. And they are a little too zealous about it. And you know what we do? We don't hire that person... You don't want a justice system where you have prosecutors who are cowboys."

National security and Terrorism

Bharara has said the office’s top priority is protecting Americans from the threat of terrorism, whether homegrown or foreign-based. According to Bharara, after 9/11 “as crime has gone global and national security threats are global, in my view the long arm of the law has to get even longer. We can’t wait until bombs are going off.” Bharara has also been an advocate of trying and prosecuting terrorists through the civilian court system. Bharara, at a joint media availability held on April 1, 2014 with U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said, "Every time this Office is called upon to prosecute an accused terrorist, we stand at the ready to do what is needed to obtain justice and protect the interests of the United States, as we do in all of our prosecutions."

During his tenure as U.S. Attorney, the office has prosecuted several international terrorists, and secured life sentences for Faisal Shazad, the Times Square Bomber, and Ahmed Ghailani, an Al Qaeda associate who was responsible for the mass murder of innocents at the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. More recently, Bharara oversaw the prosecution of Al Qaeda spokesman and Osama bin Laden's son-in-law Sulaiman Abu Ghayth, who was convicted of conspiracy to kill Americans, conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists, and providing material support to terrorists. Abu Ghayth had, among other actions, appeared in video footage alongside Osama bin Laden and other al Qaeda leaders as they justified the September 11, 2001 attacks. Most recently, Bharara's office convicted Abu Hamza al-Masri, an Al Qaeda cleric who was convicted for charges relating to hostage taking, conspiracy to establish a militant training camp, and calling for holy war in Afghanistan.

Bharara’s office convicted Affia Siddiqui for attempting to kill American servicemen in Afghanistan as well as four men for plotting to blow up a synagogue in Riverdale. In February 2011, the first pirate in modern times, Abduwali Muse, was sentenced in Manhattan federal court to more than 33 years in prison, following prosecution by the office. In November 2011, under Bharara's supervision, his Office convicted the Russian international arms trafficker Viktor Bout for intending to smuggle arms to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) to be used against U.S. forces. Bharara’s office is also prosecuting alleged associates of al-Shabaab, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, and Hizballah.

On April 13, 2013, Bharara was on a list released by the Russian Federation of Americans banned from entering the country over their alleged human rights violations. The list was a direct response to the so-called Magnitsky list revealed by the United States the day before.

http://calvinayre.com/2013/11/03/business/federal-judge-calls-preet-bharara-drama-queen/



jA US federal judge has criticized Preet Bharara for being a drama queen. Specifically, US District Judge Richard J. Sullivan accused the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) of overegging the drama in press releases that accompany prosecutions brought by Bharara’s office, which include high-profile gambling cases such as the Black Friday indictments. Speaking last month at a conference organized by the Practising Law Institute, Sullivan said Bharara’s press releases contained melodramatic language that “seems to be designed for tabloid consumption.” Sullivan wondered if such language was “appropriate at the pre-conviction stage,” given its potential to taint a jury pool if/when a case actually comes to trial. SDNY deputy attorney Richard Zabel, who was on the same panel as Sullivan, rode to Bharara’s rescue, saying the amped-up wordplay was intended “to be quoted and draw attention to the case” since the average man on the street “can’t read a complaint.” Can’t or won’t?

AND SLAVA MAKES TWELVE…

Speaking of the SDNY, there’s been more activity stemming from the April takedown of that Taiwanchik-Trincher poker/sportsbetting ring. Late last month, Slava Greenberg pled guilty to participating in a racketeering conspiracy, leaving him facing a maximum of 20 years in stripes when he’s sentenced on Feb. 27. Greenberg, who also agreed to forfeit an unspecified amount of cash, was the 12th member of the 34 individuals named in the indictment to admit his guilt, following similar pleas by (among others) Bryan Zuriff, William Barbalat, Kirill Rapoport, Edwin Ting and Justin Smith. (In Bharara’s defense, the press release announcing Greenberg’s plea deal contained little in the way of hyperbole.)

Insider Trading

From 2009 to 2012 (and ongoing), Bharara's office oversaw the Galleon Group insider trading investigation against Raj Rajaratnam, Rajat Gupta, Anil Kumar and 60+ others. Rajaratnam was convicted at trial on 14 counts related to insider trading. Bharara is said to have "reaffirmed his office’s leading role in pursuing corporate crime with this landmark insider trading case, which relied on aggressive prosecutorial methods and unprecedented tactics." Bharara has often spoken publicly and written an op-ed about the culture surrounding corporate crime and its effect on market confidence and business risk.


On July 25, 2013, Bharara announced criminal and civil charges against SAC Capital Advisors LP, one of the largest and most successful hedge-fund firms in the United States. The announcement resulted from a multi-year investigation during which eight current or former SAC employees have pled guilty. The government charged SAC Capital with securities and wire fraud and sought forfeiture and money laundering penalties. Bharara accused SAC Capital of creating a culture of “institutional indifference” which facilitated “inside trading that was substantial, pervasive and on a scale without known precedent in the hedge fund industry.” On November 4, 2013, Bharara announced a guilty plea agreement with SAC Capital Advisors LP. Four days later, SAC Capital Advisors LP pled guilty to a single count of wire fraud and four counts of securities fraud and agreed to pay a $1.8 billion settlement and close its investment advisory business. It is the largest settlement ever for insider trading.

Madoff Ponzi Scheme

Bharara’s office worked together with Irving Picard, the trustee overseeing the recovery of funds from Bernard Madoff's Ponzi scheme, to secure a $7.2 billion settlement with the estate of Jeffry Picower. The amount, equivalent to the total amount Picower withdrew from his account with Madoff before the scheme collapsed, is the largest forfeiture in U.S. history. The money will be used to compensate victims of Madoff’s fraud.

Almost as soon as he took office, Bharara began investigating the role of Madoff's primary banker, JPMorgan Chase, in the fraud. On January 7, 2014; Bharara announced that his office and JPMorgan had reached a deferred prosecution agreement that called for JPMorgan to forfeit $1.7 billion—the largest forfeiture ever demanded from a bank in American history—to settle charges that it and its predecessors violated the Bank Secrecy Act by failing to alert authorities about Madoff's actions. Bharara said that his office had amassed evidence that JPMorgan had failed to exercise even rudimentary oversight over Madoff's banking activities. The government will use the money to help make Madoff's victims whole. Bharara's office filed a two-count criminal information charging JPMorgan with felony violations of the Bank Secrecy Act, but those charges will be dismissed in two years provided that Chase reforms its anti-money laundering procedures and cooperates with the government in its investigation.

His office also handled the criminal prosecutions of several employees at Madoff’s firm and their associates, who were convicted by a jury on March 24, 2014.

Bank of America suit

On October 24, 2012, Mr. Bharara along with Federal prosecutors in Manhattan sued Bank of America for $1 billion, accusing the bank of carrying out a mortgage scheme that defrauded the government during the depths of the financial crisis. He brought the case with the inspector general of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the government watchdog for the bank bailout program.

The trial, which took place before U.S. District Judge Jed S. Rakoff, lasted four weeks. On October 23, 2013, following roughly five hours of deliberation, the jury found Bank of America liable for selling Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac thousands of defective loans in the first mortgage-fraud case brought by the U.S. government to go to trial. The civil verdict also found the bank’s Countrywide Financial unit and former Countrywide executive Rebecca Mairone liable. Bharara and his team of federal prosecutors argued that the Countrywide program—nicknamed “the Hustle”—processed mortgage applications with a focus on quantity rather than quality, resulting in the bank’s churning out unqualified buyers housing loans that were destined to fail.

The government relied upon the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act (FIRREA), a civil statue that had rarely been used in the previous two decades. The victory marked the first time a major U.S. bank has been held accountable for its role in the financial crisis.

Toyota Deferred Prosecution Agreement

In March 2014, the U.S. Attorney's Office charged Toyota by information with one count of wire fraud for lying to consumers about two safety-related issues in the company’s cars, each of which caused unintended acceleration. Under the terms of a deferred prosecution agreement that Toyota entered into the same day the information was filed, Toyota agreed to pay a $1.2 billion financial penalty, the largest criminal penalty ever imposed on an auto manufacturer. The company also admitted the truth of a detailed statement of facts accompanying the DPA, and agreed to submit to a three-year monitorship.

maybe my life will improve....

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Francis sacked the five-man board of the Vatican's financial watchdog on Thursday - all Italians - in the latest move to break with an old guard associated with a murky past under his predecessor.

The Vatican said the pope named four experts from Switzerland, Singapore, the United States and Italy to replace them on the board of the Financial Information Authority (AIF), the Holy See's internal regulatory office. The new board includes a woman for the first time.

All five outgoing members were Italians who had been expected to serve five-year terms ending in 2016 and were laymen associated with the Vatican's discredited financial old guard.

Reformers inside the Vatican had been pushing for the pope, who already has taken a series of steps to clean up Vatican finances, to appoint professionals with an international background to work with Rene Bruelhart, a Swiss lawyer who heads the AIF and who has been pushing for change.

Vatican sources said Bruelhart, Liechtenstein's former top anti-money laundering expert, was chafing under the old board and wanted Francis to appoint global professionals like him...

/... http://www.thestar.com.my/News/World/2014/06/05/Pope-sacks-board-of-Vaticans-financial-watchdog/

I'm off to do stuff, stuff that's much less interesting....see you tonight! Keep on keeping on, Weekenders!

INTERACTIVE INCOME VS CAPITAL SPENDING GRAPH AT LINK....


YOU ARE GOING TO WIND UP WORKING IN A GAS STATION. CAPITALISM IS DYING, AMERICANS.

http://bizarrotheater.blogspot.com/2014/06/you-are-going-to-wind-up-working-in-gas.html


LOTS OF CHARTS AND TROUBLING CONCLUSIONS....

http://www.thenation.com/blog/180151/temp-nation-how-corporations-are-evading-accountability-workers-expense

At Taylor Farms in Tracy, California, one of the country’s major salad producers, Susie Serna works in quality control, making sure food production standards are upheld. But lately, it’s the quality of the jobs she’s been worried about. In her department, she sees temporary workers constantly milling through, facing safety risks at work and constantly at risk of losing their jobs altogether.

“They don’t get the proper training,” she says, recalling how she spotted one temp worker wearing tennis shoes instead of the requisite boots. “It’s like, ‘Do this, do that.’ No communication whatsoever.’”

Because temps are “cheaper,” she says, management regularly bring on workers hired through a temporary staffing agency to do the same job as regular workers like her, but at lower pay rates. Often, the temps get “only a certain amount of training…because they know they’re gonna let them go.” When she’s campaigned to organize the work site with the Teamsters, she says that temp workers face consequences for showing interest in the union. “They’ll let them go, but they’ll bring somebody [who] will stay with the company,” she observes. “That person will have a negative attitude and follow the rules of what the crew leader’s doing.”

The workers at some of the most abusive companies in the country are not actually employees, and their bosses aren’t technically the ones who pay their wages. In the twenty-first-century workplace, the activity formerly known as work is now a tangle of subcontracts, temp jobs, 1099s and freelance gigs, allowing companies to atomize their workers across many firms in a diffuse production chain. At the same time, firms limit their responsibilities to pay fair wages or respect workers’ rights. Many workers, in turn, are multilaterally disempowered—alienated from the worksite’s firm at the top of the chain, detached from the staffing agency in the middle, and unprotected by the government or unions.

A recent report from the National Employment Law Project (NELP) shows these outsourced or “contingent” labor structures have become “one of the central factors driving down wages and working conditions in the post-recession economy.”

Public corruption

Bharara has said that “there is no prosecutor’s office in the state that takes more seriously the responsibility to root out public corruption in Albany and anywhere else that we might find it, and I think our record speaks for itself.” During his tenure, Bharara has charged several current and former elected officials in public corruption cases, including Senator Vincent Leibell, Senator Hiram Monserrate, NYC Councilman Larry Seabrook, and Yonkers City Councilwoman Sandy Annabi. Bharara’s office uncovered an alleged corruption ring involving New York State Senator Carl Kruger. In April 2012, Kruger was sentenced to seven years in prison. In February 2011, Bharara announced the indictment of five consultants working on New York City’s electronic payroll and timekeeping project, CityTime, for misappropriating more than $80 million from the project. The investigation has expanded with five additional defendants being charged, including a consultant who allegedly received more than $5 million illegal kickbacks on the projects.

In early 2013, Mr. Bharara oversaw the conviction of New York City Police Department Officer Gilberto Valle, who was part of an alleged plot to rape and then cook and eat (cannibalize) women. Mr. Bharara and his team argued that Valle had done more than hypothesize, think, or speculate (in online networks where such fantasies are discussed), but had moved on from being a possible danger to others to the criminal planning phase and had even visited the street where one of the women lived, at the behest of another defendant. However, the defense and others who objected to the verdict argued that all he had done was fantasize, not plan, and that such thoughts or online posts, however twisted, were still protected. The defense team (Robert Baum and Julia L. Gatto) may ask the judge to set aside the verdict, or may appeal. If he does keep the felony conviction and is sentenced, Valle would automatically no longer serve in law enforcement.

On April 2, 2013, Bharara unsealed federal corruption charges against New York State Senator Malcolm A. Smith, New York City Councilman Dan Halloran and several other Republican party officials. The federal complaint alleged that Smith attempted to secure a spot on the Republican ballot in the 2013 New York City mayoral election through bribery.

Violent crimes and Gang activity

Since 2009, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York has convicted more than 1,000 of approximately 1,300 people charged in 52 large-scale drug and gang takedown. On lowering violent crime rates, Bharara has said, "You can measure the number of people arrested and the number of shootings, but success is when you lift the sense of intimidation and fear."

In January 2011, Bharara’s office participated in a multi-state organized crime takedown, charging 26 members of the Gambino crime family with racketeering, murder, narcotics, and firearms charges. This action was part of a coordinated effort with U.S. Attorney Offices in Brooklyn, New York, Newark, New Jersey and Providence, Rhode Island. Bharara has also overseen the largest criminal sweep of gangs in Newburgh, New York, working with the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigrations and Customs Enforcement and local law enforcement agencies to bring charges against members of the Latin Kings and Bloods gangs, amongst others.

Complex fraud, Civil fraud, and Cyber crime

Since entering office, Bharara renewed focus on sophisticated, large-scale frauds, creating a Complex Frauds and Cybercrime Unit in the Criminal Division and a partner Civil Frauds Unit in the Civil Division to focus on these types of crimes. The Complex Frauds and Cybercrime Unit has uncovered and prosecuted cases involving frauds of all kinds, including a massive fraud involving disability benefits at the Long Island Rail Road, an immigration fraud mill that operated through a Manhattan-based law firm, and a $57.3 million fraud on the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, which administers programs established to aid the survivors of Nazi persecution.

The Complex Frauds and Cybercrime Unit is also charged with addressing the growing threat of cybercrime. In November 2011, the Office charged seven defendants with operating an internet fraud scheme that infected more than four million computers worldwide and manipulated internet advertising business. In June 2012, The New York Times published an Op-Ed written by Bharara about the threat posed to private industry by cybercrime and encouraged corporate leaders to take preventative measures and create contingency plans.

The Civil Frauds Unit has investigated and brought cases against Deutsche Bank and a subsidiary, Mortgage IT, as well as Allied Home Mortgage, for reckless and fraudulent lending practices. In February 2012, the office filed and simultaneously settled a civil fraud lawsuit against CitiMortgage. As part of the settlement, the bank admitted and accepted responsibility for failing to comply with certain HUD-related loan requirements and other conduct and agreed to pay the U.S. $158.3 million.

Bharara with his wife at the 2012 Time 100 gala

Bharara has also been very active in prosecutions related to online poker. In 2010, he "threatened an Australian payment processor with up to 75 years in prison for helping online poker companies do business with their U.S. customers." In April 2011, Bharara charged 11 founding members of internet gambling companies and their associates involved with pay processing with bank fraud, money laundering and illegal gambling under the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 (UIGEA). The case is United States v. Scheinberg.

Preet Bharara and his office came to the limelight again with the arrest of Devyani Khobragade, the Deputy Consul General of India in New York. The prosecution accused her of making false statements in the visa application of an Indian national who was employed as the housekeeper at her home in New York.

The incident turned into a diplomatic standoff between India and United States as Khobragade was strip searched and kept in custody with drug peddlers. The US Marshal Service acknowledged this as well.

India took serious action to protest against the alleged mistreatment of its diplomat: ID cards of U.S. consular personnel and their families were revoked, airport passes rescinded and embassy imports of liquor and other goods were frozen. Even the security barriers in front of the US embassy were removed as retaliation.

Mr. Bharara and his office were accused of racial discrimination by media. He has been accused of targeting people of Indian origin. The United States Government justified and supported his office and refuted the charges of racial discrimination. A State Department spokesperson stated that only standard procedures are undertaken in the arrest and the US Attorney's office was following procedure.

US Secretary of State John Kerry expressed regret over the incident during his conversation with Indian National Security Adviser Shiv Shankar Meno. US Ambassador to India Nancy Powell also expressed her regret for the circumstances surrounding the consular officer's arrest.

The United States maintains that Ms. Khobragade did not have diplomatic immunity from prosecution in United States courts. Bharara told the media that "There has been much misinformation and factual inaccuracy in the reporting on the charges against Devyani Khobragade, it is important to correct these inaccuracies because they are misleading people and creating an inflammatory atmosphere on an unfounded basis."

Speaking at Harvard Law School during its 2014 Class Day ceremony, Preet Bharara said that it was the US Department of State who initiated and investigated proceedings against the Indian official : “(It was) not the crime of the century but a serious crime nonetheless, that is why the State Department opened the case, that is why the State Department investigated it. That is why career agents in the State Department asked career prosecutors in my office to approve criminal charges.”

Bharara is a naturalized United States citizen.

Bharara traces his desire to become a lawyer back to the seventh grade, which was when he read the play, "Inherit the Wind."

Bharara is a lifelong Bruce Springsteen fan. At an October 2012 concert in Hartford, Connecticut, Springsteen shouted, “This is for Preet Bharara!” before launching into his song “Death to My Hometown.”

On May 19, 2013, Bharara delivered the commencement address at Fordham Law School's 106th Graduation Day at Radio City Music Hall. He was also presented with an Honorary Doctor of Laws degree.

Later that week, on May 23, 2013, Bharara delivered the commencement address at Columbia Law School, his alma mater. It was the 20th year reunion of his own graduation. On May 27, 2014, Bharara delivered the commencement address at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law. The following day, Bharara spoke at Harvard Law School's Class Day Ceremony along with comedian Mindy Kaling.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2215151/

released September 2013

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/06/05/1304712/-The-way-to-stop-corporate-lawbreaking-is-to-prosecute-the-people-who-break-the-law-says-Robert-Reich?detail=email

Robert Reich, Professor of Public Policy, at the University of California at Berkeley, calls for holding more corporate executive lawbreakers criminally liable for corporate crimes in The Way to Stop Corporate Lawbreaking Is to Prosecute the People Who Break the Law

After reviewing allegations that GM, Credit Suisse, and Arthur Anderson broke the laws, receiving relatively trivial fines, which they consider part of the cost of doing business, Robert Reich notes that no executives have been charged with any crimes and suggests that until we start putting senior corporate executives in jail, we will see no diminution of corporate wrong doing.


Reich obviously wrote this prior to the late afternoon announcement of executives at GM losing their jobs. But, this announcement does not change the validity of his basic point. Relatively puny corporate fines are not a sufficient deterrent. The $35 million fine of GM is "peanuts" to a hundred-billion-dollar corporation.

Reich also thinks it is absurd to have corporations pleading guilty to criminal conduct, as Credit Suisse did, it means nothing. He notes that in the rare case of corporations being "executed" as was the case with Arthur Andersen, the wrong people paid the price - the 28,000 employees who lost their jobs had nothing to do with the crimes. The guilty senior partners skulked off to work in other accounting or consulting firms.


I agree.

Some of Robert Reich's best writing has been on income inequality which has been one of his top issues for as long as I can remember. He apparently has a movie coming out about it in September, although this may be a spoof, joking that the topic of income inequality could make it to a movie coming to a theater near you in September. Maybe you can help me figure it out. Either way it seems like a clever way to call attention to a vital issue that gets way too little attention for its importance.

New silent wind turbine could generate half of a homes electric needs, says company The Archimedes


http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/06/02/1303896/-New-silent-wind-turbine-could-generate-half-of-a-homes-electric-needs-says-company-The-Archimedes?detail=email

A Dutch company called The Archimedes has developed a small, highly efficient, and silent rooftop wind energy generator called the Liam1, which it claims could generate half the power a typical house would need, and which they say would be ideal for combining with solar rooftop PV panels.

The company states that the Liam F1 turbine could generate 1,500 kWh of energy at wind speeds of 5m/s, enough to cover half of an average household's energy use. ... When used in combination with rooftop solar panels, a house could run off grid. "When there is wind you use the energy produced by the wind turbine; when the sun is shining you use the solar cells to produce the energy," The Archimedes CEO Richard Ruijtenbeek said.

The Liam's blades are shaped like a Nautilus shell. The design allows it to point into the wind to capture the most amount of energy, while also producing very little sound. The inventor of the turbine Marinus Mieremet says that the power output is 80 percent of the theoretical maximum energy that could be harnessed from the wind.

“Generally speaking, there is a difference in pressure in front and behind of the rotor blades of a windmill. However, this is not the case with the Liam F1. The difference in pressure is created by the spatial figure in the spiral blade. This results in a much better performance. Even when the wind is blowing at an angle of 60 degrees into the rotor, it will start to spin. We do not require expensive software: because of its conical shape, the wind turbine yaws itself automatically into the optimal wind direction. Just like a wind vane. And because the wind turbine encounters minimal resistance, he is virtually silent," said Mieremet.

The Archimedes is now working on an even smaller turbine that could fit on top of lamposts, boats, and smaller applications.

With the announcement today of the EPA's proposed new standards for reducing carbon emissions, we have all the more reason to look to renewable energy options to supply our energy needs.

You can post here still....I'll look in tomorrow!